
Book- 1J> -5* 



THE EDWIN C. DINWIDDIE 

COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 

TEMPERANCE AND ALLIED SUBJECTS 

(PRESENTED BY MRS. DINWIDDIE) 




M ; 




LOU J. BEAUCHAMP. 



SUNSHINE 



WRITTEN IN THE INTEREST OF 



TEMPERANCE, SUNSHINE 



GOOD HUMOR. 

INKARD, THE DRUNKARD 
THE DRUNKARD SAVER. 

BY 

LOU J. BEAUCHAMP, 

GOSPEL TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE. 

SEVENTH EDITION. 



HAMILTON, 0. : 

Albert Dix, Publisher. 
1888. 



0* 



a(p 



bT 



iOU J- Bfc/ * 187 9. 









DSjDIG&MIOfl. 



TO THE BEST OF WIVES, 

" % Wxttk Mommxr 

FROM A MIDDIiINGxGOOD HUSBAND. 

Lou J. Beauchamp. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER I. rAGK 

13 

Alcohol— Who Made It? 

CHAPTER II. 

Alcohol-The Extent of the Traffic 

CHAPTER III. 

Alcohol— Why Men Drink It 

CHAPTER IV. 

Alcohol— What It Has Done 

CHAPTER V. 55 

Alcohol-Arguments Pro and Con 

CHAPTER VI. . 

Moderate Drinking 

CHAPTER VII. 

Drunkenness-The Curse and the Cure • 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Drunkenness-The Curse and the Cure-Continued 

CHAPTER IX. 

Local Option 

CHAPTER X. 

115 

The One Man Power 

chapter xi. 
Self Help 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHARTER XII. 

To Young Men— Attributes of Success, Sobriety » :.133 

CHAPTER XIII. 

To Young Men — Attributes of Success, Labor 148 

CHAPTER XIV. 

To Young Men — Attributes of Success, Pluck, Education 155 

CHAPTER XV. 

To Young Men— Attributes of Success, Thrift 164 

CHAPTER XVI. 

To Young Men — In Conclusion 174 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Supporting the Saloon Keeper , 187 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Parental Responsibility 196 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Domestic Life 213 

CHAPTER XX. 

Woman's Right to the Ballot 228 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Churches and the Temperance Question 245 

CHAPTER XXII. 

"Legal Suasion" 261 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

How to Conduct Temperance Meetings 269 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Revivals, Camp Meetings, etc 2S2 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Our Work— Its Past, Present and Future 293 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

L'Envoi.. 303 



PREFACE. 

There is a certain charm about a book containing one's 
own name upon the title page, which charm has driven 
many men and women to the inditing and publishing of 
books which, though they may have "rose like a rocket/' 
as speedily "fell like the stick." No visions of fortune 
impelled the writers onward — glory alone being the 
reward they sought. Others have rushed into print, 
believing a book the "open sesame" to wealth, only to 
find after a time their fair pages wrapping the sugar 
brought home from the grocery, and the bound volumes 
strung out in a row upon the upper shelves of the book 
store, covered with the dust of ages, and resting as 
placidly as the Seven Sleepers, and like the occupants of 
many graves — "unwept (?), unhonored and unsung." 

Neither of these reasons can be attributed as the cause 
of this publication. With an experience among pen and 
types of twelve years, the author knows something of 
"the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune" constantly 
surrounding or wounding those who venture into the 
charmed realms of literature. His object, then, must be 
sought outside of fortune and of fame. 



PREFACE. 



. • l*<y+A himself, m ust state t1iat 

^ T'^'ZstC a - r/eoWe portion of >e 

another brain must Dear a ^ui^er of enter- 

praise or blame of ^^^^Uness «■ 
prising reeord, W ho in all the Phases ^ ^ 

has found dollars ^^^ glMBa , advised the 
were hunting dimes W ithmagnit>"igg ^ 

writer to fight intemperance j ih brai P ^ ^ 

Primarily this book is the °^J a hatred 

borne by the author against ^IZ tudy years 
created by the memory of s eve*. yea rs t .^^ 

of Ufe sacrificed upon thenar of Al ^ , 
borne of a wasted irame a J tr ed hearts, and 

ing bnsiness wrecked^ • ^^^^ to grasp a 
a bullet angrily ^, * £s of tbe dam ned. These 
soul to be sent into ^ *»* w upon brain and 
memories, burned as they me b en F ^ ^ 

heart and soul as with ^"^^ after five 

real reasons for ^.^'^pUtfori, endeavor- 
hundred nights upon tlie temperance p , by 

ing t0 wound his old ^^^e Utfle, ^y 
another means of T^'u^Vt in the power of 



PREFACE. 9 

is a contribution to the literature of the great moral 
revolution known as the Christian Temperance Warfare 
against strong drink. For the young men all over our 
land who are daily tempted by this Moloch, for those who 
have fallen under its baleful curse and are now under 
clouds through which no rift of sunlight breaks upon 
their eyes, for those who walk on paths of thorns, know- 
ing nothing of a pathway strewn with flowers, for wives 
whose eyes are dull and lustreless, whose cheeks are 
sunken and pale, and whose hearts are starving for the 
old-time love and tenderness, for babes whose faces seem 
a decade too old, and whose wasted forms tell of saloon- 
keepers' babes well fed and well dressed, these pages 
are written — with head and heart both. With the 
hope that the sunshine may replace the clouds and the 
flowers replace the thorns for some now agonized and 
despairing, and keep others from tasting the bitterness 
of the drunkard's life, the author has gone into this 
labor, and humbly hopes that it will not be in vain. 

Furthermore, this book will be readable — as it is 
printed in large type. It will be interesting — for the 
binding has all the glories of a Kentucky sunset on it ; 
it will be full of errors — but no extra charge will be 
made for them ; it will not attempt to cover the entire 
field, but will only attempt in a scattering fashion to 
strike a blow here and there toward the final consum- 
mation of our dream — the time when intemperance shall 
be no more. 



10 



PBEFACE. 



The author has been called "The minister of the new 
religion of temperance, snnshine and good humor. 
These three attributes of happiness will be the leading 
features of the book itself. Eschewing as far as possible 
self and science, drunken debaucheries and delirium 
tremens, the author will endeavor to benefit and instruct 
to advise and to guide, hoping that at the end of the 
feast all will rise from the table saying-«It was good to 
have been there." , 

If this preface does not suit, lay down the book and 
hunt up an almanac; but if thus far our company has 
been satisfactory, read on to the end and may sunsiune 
follow the reading. Thine for the higher lite. 

Lou J. Beauchamp. 

Hamilton, O., August 1, 1879. 



PREFACE TO LAST EDITION. 



It is now three years since the earlier editions of "Sunshine" 
were completely exhausted. During this time there have been 
continual demands for copies from individuals and the trade, 
which is the excuse of publisher and author for once more bring- 
ing the book into notice. Since first entering the work of Tem- 
perance, the author of "Sunshine" has presented his ideas on the 
subject to over two thousand five hundred audiences in many of 
the States of the Union. It is almost needless to say that this 
experience, which has gone hand in hand with continual studies 
of the effects of the various systems of compromise legislation in 
use in the different States, has made him a firm believer in the 
doctrine of absolute prohibition of the manufacture and sale of 
intoxicating liquors. This has been his platform theme for the 
past four years, and will be his theme until death settles the 
question so far as he is concerned, or prohibition itself renders 
further platform efforts unnecessary. 

As the temperance people of many States, however, are still 
believing in the efficacy of local option and other half-way meas- 
ures as means towards the ultimate end of complete prohibition, 
the author has left his views on such systems unchanged, merely 
announcing his devotion to the principle of the complete destruc- 
tion of the liquor traffic as an act of justice to himself, and that 
he may be placed upon record as one of the "fanatics" who 
believe that one grog-shop open in a State, even under a heavy 
license, can cause more drunkenness, crime, misery, shame, and 
want than should be tolerated in a Christian Commonwealth. 

Should this latest edition of " Sunshine" meet with but a tithe 
of the kind words and earnest thanks for helpful suggestions 
which greeted the first issues, the author will be entirely satisfied. 
Eespectfully, Hopefully, 

LOU J. BEAUCHAMP. 
Hamilton, Ohio, September 1, 1884. 




SUNSHINE. 

♦-♦-♦ 

CHAPTER I, 

ALCOHOL — WHO MADE IT? 

fHEEE is a legend extant that once upon a time 
the gentleman who is supposed to reign over the 
dominions of the damned, and keep up the 
market price of sulphur, called around him his earthly 
agents, and, offering a prize to the one who should in the 
next year bring him the largest number of souls, asked 
each what means he would employ in working for the 
prize. The legend avers that one proposed taking the 
guise of the Scarlet Woman; another, Temper; a third, 
Gold; a fourth, Fame; a fifth, Scandal; a sixth, Fine 
Clothes, and so on to the last, who answered — "Your 
Majesty, I shall take upon myself the guise of Strong 
Drink, and thus accoutred have no fears but that I shall 
win the prize. It is the same guise I have worn for 



14 SUNSHINE. 

many months past, but owing to the fact that no license 
has been charged by the governments of the earth upon 
my weapon to win souls for your kingdom, I have not 
been as successful as I should desire. Every man in my 
kingdom, the United States, has been allowed to make 
alcohol to suit himself, without a license, and hence it 
has been invariably pure, and although in that state it 
has Avon for you many thousands of souls, under the 
license laws just passed by the senate and congress of 
that country, which forbid men even to manufacture 
liquor for their own use unless they take out a license, 
I am assured that the numbers of my victims will be 
trebled hereafter. The manufacture of whisky, which is 
the favorite drink up yonder, is now in the hands of 
speculators, who have discovered new plans of making it, 
whereby less corn and rye are used, and certain drugs and 
chemicals enter into the fluids. These being poisonous, 
more quickly inflame the brain, and Your Majesty w^ell 
knows it is at that time my work commences. When 
the man's brain shall be crazed with what the funny 
papers up there call "forty-rod" and "snake-fence," and 
the like, combinations of corn, rye and these poisons I 
have spoken of, I step in and suggest robbery, forgery, 
assaults, murder and suicide, and, checking each victim 
for Hades, hie myself to the next saloon to lie in wait for 
new victims. 

"In the guise of Alcohol, if Your Majesty does not 
already know it, your obedient servant is welcomed 



ALCOHOL — WHO MADE IT? 15 

everywhere. I am to be found at the home, upon the 
table, in the sick room, at the wedding feast, the party, 
the ball, and even at the Sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper I slip into the wine typical of Christ's blood and 
do my duty to the king who employs me. I have even 
stood upon the steps of the capitol at Washington with 
the president of the United States, and influenced him to 
such an extent that he could not, in his inaugural 
speech, tell the names of his friends in the cabinet. I 
have tracked ministers, senators, authors, heroes, step by 
step, until I sent them hurtling to hell, and now that the 
government has elected me to the high office of filling 
its treasury and thus puts me wholly into the hands of 
speculators who love dollars and laugh at lost souls, the 
coming years shall be filled with the tales to be told of 
Alcohol." 

His Satanic Majesty heard the story of his imp 
throughout, and said at its conclusion : 

"Truly, beloved, you and your Alcohol are the best 
friends of the devil. Get to work at once, while out of 
respect for your government I call in my builders and 
extend my dominions, for surely I shall want room ere 
long for the souls you are to send me." 

Is it not safe to say that the emissary of Satan has 
kept his promise? 

There are in the world a certain class of men among 
whom, it is sad to assert, can be found many so-called 
Christians, who, finding in the Bible some paragraph 



16 SUNSHINE. 

asserting that "all things in the earth are creatures of 
God, made for man's use/' claim that unless we mean 
disrespect to God we are compelled to use whisky, wine, 
and other drinks of like character, moderately of course. 
If whisky is a creature of God their argument is still 
w r eak, for then in the same category we must put all 
other things that are dangerous and devilish, and 
moderately use them as "good creatures of God." 
Snakes might be occasionally used for neckties and tigers 
once in a while used as sheep-dogs, not because of their 
adaptability, but because God made them. A little 
poison, now and then, should likewise be relished by the 
wisest men for the reason, forsooth, God created it, and 
all things else, for man. 

The argument that alcohol is a creature of God is denied 
by all right-thinking men. The golden grain, swayed 
by each zephyr and appearing in mighty fields as poems 
on the face of nature, comes fresh from the hand of God. 
It is full of health and strength for His creatures and 
yet from this same swaying poem on God's forethought 
for his children comes that which destroys them — not of 
God, however. It is not until man steps in, and taking 
the golden life-giving grain into his own dark dens, that 
alcohol comes. There, hidden from human sight, the 
grain is rotted, ruined and placed reeking with unwhole- 
some vapors into worms and stills, and when all that 
God made pure in it has been murdered by man, from its 
dead body comes the poison that man makes for his 



ALCOHOL — WHO MADE IT? 17 

brother. Alcohol is thus born in death, cradled in cor- 
ruption, christened in rottenness and reeking with the 
blood of dead millions, goes forth, a mighty giant cursed 
of God and hated of true men, to conquer, leaving in its 
wake a trail of blighted hopes, ruined lives, debased 
greatness, want, disease and death. At each step of its 
journey it strikes down a man, a woman/or a child, and 
ere the next victim is reached there rises along the line 
a fleshless, grinning skeleton to caricature life and stand 
with pointed finger at the devouring monster, an ever- 
lasting monument to Strong Drink. 

The luscious grape, dressed in royal purple and 
nestling on its throne of green, containing as it does the 
wine of God, bottled, sealed and branded with the sun- 
shine stolen from the day, has no alcohol behind the 
imprisoned sunlight of each purple globe; but man, 
seeking recruits for Satan's imp, tears it from its nestling 
place, and crushing the royal bulb until it weeps its fate 
in crystal tears, takes the product, which is all of God, 
and placing it away where the atmosphere may hold high 
carnival, rots, spoils, and ferments the golden juice until 
the purity sealed within the grape by the sunlight and 
the dew steps out and HelPs Prime Minister, Alcohol, 
steps in. Man placed it there. God denies the product, 
and says : "Woe unto him who looketh upon the wine 
when it is red, when it moveth itself aright, when it 
giveth its color in the cup, for at the last it biteth like 



18 SUNSHINE. 

a serpent and stingeth like an adder." And from a 
million graves on the hillside and in the valley comes 
the agonizing cry — "True, Lord, true; the serpent has 
bitten, the adder has stung, and the light of Thy face is 
shut out from us ! " 

Alcohol from grain is a native of Persia, according to 
history, it first being discovered in that country in the 
fourteenth century and was used as a cosmetic by the 
fair beauties of that nation. At what period of time it 
left the toilet stand to reappear upon the sideboard 
history does not say, but whenever that day was, there 
must have been high carnival in Hell. 

Alcohol, in one shape or another, has been in existence 
since almost the baby years of history, and for many 
centuries has it been stalking up and down upon the fair 
face of the earth, carrying physical, moral, and spiritual 
pestilence in its train. Whatever land it has visited, it 
has been only a curse; it has never been a blessing. It 
has roamed at will in all lands and among all peoples, 
and "the trail of the serpent is over them all." 

Men do not like its taste, yet they bow before it. 
They claim freedom as a heritage and are slaves to a 
fluid. They are strong as Hercules, yet a wine glass 
wraps them in chains. Their strength, again, is like 
unto Samson's, yet the decanter is their Delilah. Alcohol 
is a monarch whose sceptre is over all the civilized world 
and much of heathendom. Laughing in the faces of the 
worshipers, he even makes the church of God his home, 



ALCOHOL — WHO MADE IT? 19 

tearing the minister from the pulpit, the worshiper from 
the altar. 

A medicine in high favor with many physicians, like 
the water-cure system in Noah's time, it kills more than 
it cures. For one life saved by whisky, a hundred 
thousand graves dot the landscape. Question — Had we 
better hereafter let the one man die and save the hundred 
thousand, by banishing alcohol from the earth, or, as 
heretofore, shall the hundred thousand be murdered by 
this demon while it waits on the shelf of the apothecary 
to save the one man ? 

This, then, is the enemy we are to fight — a decoction 
of rotten grain and ruined fruit ; something that has 
sunshine imprisoned within its limpid depths — the sun- 
shine stolen from a million once happy homes; some- 
thing that contains strength for all (read the statement of 
wine-drinking physicians), but it is the strength stolen 
from the sinews and muscles of thousands of laboring 
men dead at the foot of the demon's throne. Our enemy 
can be carried in the hand, yet, like the jawbone of a 
certain ass, it has slain its thousands. It is an enemy 
that men laugh at before they have wrestled with it, and 
yet, Alexander, and Hercules, and Agamemnon, and 
Nero, and Caesar, and Helen, and later, Napoleon, and 
Blucher, and Wellington, and Nelson, and Washington, 
with all the leaders of hosts invincible since time 
was and man was, have never encompassed the victories 



20 SUNSHINE. 

of this dark, dread, damning scourge of God's 
children, born of ruin and called by fools and 
hypocrites "a creature of God." The wine cup has 
drowned more than the ocean, or, as the wit has 
it, "The corkscrew has drowned more people than the 
cork-jacket has ever saved." 



CHAPTER II. 

ALCOHOL THE EXTENT OF THE TKAFFIC. 

T has always been the belief of the author that 
statistics, sawdust and political speeches were the 
driest things in the world, and accordingly he has 
had little to do with them, but a few thoughts, in con- 
nection with the extent of the dominions of Alcohol, will 
not be out of place in a work of this character, and the 
over-sensitive reader may skip this chapter if he chooses — 
providing he tells no one of having done so. The 
chapter, however, being so full of figures, and conse- 
quently but little of the author's brain work, may be the 
most interesting chapter in the book. 

The United States Government is a great one,* and 
consequently a costly one, and with its armies of officials, 
good, bad and indifferent, honest and ultra-honest, useful 
and useless, it needs an immense amount of money to 
move it on its axis. To raise this, as is, of course, 
customary, taxes have been levied until everything under 
the sun, save babies and coffins, has to be stamped. 
But with all this, a deficit would arise every year were it 



22 SUNSHINE. 

not for the fact that there is in existence a seductive 
fluid called alcohol. From this demon the United States 
Government last year obtained the colossal revenue of 
$50,420,815. 80, the year before the revenue being seven 
millions of dollars greater. Added to this $9,937,051.78 
from fermented liquors, it will readily be seen how 
Uncle Sam manages to keep everything smooth in these 
hard times. 

These liquors, spiritous and fermented, retailed for 
$595,786,785, an average of thirteen dollars for 
each man, woman and child in the United States. 

These liquors were distilled by 4,537 distilleries, brewed 
by 3,559 breweries, wholesaled by 4,100 wholesalers, and 
retailed by 153,618 licensed retailers, or one of the latter 
for every two hundred and sixty inhabitants. 

Taking the places where strong drink is retailed, 
placing them side by side upon both sides of an avenue, 
and allowing twenty-five feet for each saloon, ^ye build 
a street two hundred and sixty-five miles long — the 
street of Hell. Stand upon the temperance platform, 
built by the temperance men and women of our land 
in the last few years^ and watch the traffic in this street 
of Hell. Last year there went through it six million 
occasional drinkers. Out of this number six hundred 
thousand habitual drunkards were made. From these 
drunkards, who reeled through the street of Hell last 
year, Satan took the life and soul of one-sixth, and only 
their bloated, purpled, pimpled corpses reached the end of 



ALCOHOL — THE EXTENT OF THE TRAFFIC. 23 

the avenue of Strong Drink. Another sixth was made 
into criminals of all grades, a twelfth into idiots, and 
another sixth into paupers and beggars, and with these 
latter came their wives, parents and children, swelling 
the grand procession of pauperism until it stretched out 
mile upon mile. 

With the dead bodies of a hundred thousand drunkards 
came the corpses of two hundred thousand innocent men, 
women and children killed by the traffic of the street of 
Hell last year — men, women and children who never 
tasted strong drink, but yet died because of its existence. 
They were burned to death in buildings set on fire by 
the lamp which fell from the nerveless hand of the 
drunkard, or by the torch of the drunken incendiary; 
they lost their lives in steamboat explosions, because a 
drunken captain ran a race, or a drunken engineer was 
unable to do his duty ; they were killed in a horrible 
railroad accident, caused by a drunken engineer or 
flagman; they were shot or stabbed to death by 
men inflamed by alcohol until they became fiends; 
they were starved, neglected, bruised and beaten to 
the grave, because alcohol was master of father, 
husband and son. 

All this took place last year in this so-called land of 
the free, and the street of Hell still winds its damning 
length over the fair face of our beloved land, turning out 
each year just such horrors, while fools and hypocrites 
are calling the hosts of temperance fanatics, and jeering 



24 SUNSHINE. , 

at their honest efforts to save men. To more fully 
comprehend the horrible extent of the drink traffic, let us 
study it by comparison. 

The drink bill of the United States last year would 
give every family in our land a ten-dollar Bible, Webster's 
Unabridged, one set of the Comprehensive Commentary, 
Josephus' complete works, Dicks' works, Hume, com- 
plete, Gibbon, complete, History of the United States, in 
all twenty-five volumes. Besides this respectable 
library, it would supply each family with a religious 
paper, two temperance papers, a secular paper, a 
county paper, and an agricultural paper for one year 
each. Added to this, the salaries of eighty thousand 
ministers could be paid in full and the treasury 
have a balance left. 

According to the National Temperance Almanac, the 
whisky bill of our land for the thirteen years since the 
war was $6,780,161,805, or $237,000 more than the war 
expenses. In the last five years the drinking bill was 
three billion dollars. With this latter sum a railroad 
could be built and furnished from ocean to ocean; 
another from Boston to the end of Florida; one from 
Chicago to New Orleans; and one from Lake Superior 
to the mouth of the Rio Grande, Texas. Also, a capitol 
could be built in every state in the Union, costing two 
million dollars for each building. Likewise a State 
University in each state, to cost the same sum, with an 
endowment of one million dollars each. Add to 



ALCOHOL — THE EXTENT OF THE TRAFFIC. 25 

this the national „ debt, and take the entire 
sum from the three billion dollars and there will 
be a surplus in the United States treasury of 
$242,748,671.22. 

Take this amount of money, invest it in manufacture, 
and the idlers of the world would find employment, 
plenty would replace want, and the hum of industry, 
now heard at its very lowest, would rise triumphantly 
upon the air, our land would prosper as never before, our 
produce would all find markets, and "hard times" would 
be something to laugh at. 

These millions might thus be invested were strong 
drink a thing of the past, but so long as the government, 
hungering for millions, sells souls for them, darkness 
will be upon the face of the earth. The cost of our 
penitentiaries, poor-houses, and like institutions, out- 
weighs the revenue to the government' from strong 
drink, and legislators have not yet seen that the way to 
reduce these expenses, to get back for the nation the 
labor of the six hundred thousand confirmed drunkards, 
to save the lives of the armies to be slain by alcohol, is 
to do away with it once and for all. 

True, men will stop right here and mutter all sorts of 
mutterings, and assert that without the revenue trom 
strong drink the government would soon be bankrupt; 
but to the man who looks higher and sees with a clearer 
insight it would seem that if the government of the 
United States can only exist, financially, upon the graves 



26 SUNSHINE. 

of its murdered children, murdered by the drink that 
these men say supports the nation, the sooner financial 
disaster overtakes the country the better it will be for the 
cause of God and humanity — a cause over and above all 
the governments that have ever existed since out of 
chaos the world came. 

Men say to every advocate of temperance that it is all 
folly to preach against the overthrow of the traffic ; that 
the millions it brings into the nation's coffers go out into 
the different channels of trade, to the butcher, the baker, 
the grocer, the mechanic, the builder, etc., etc., and thus 
help along the balance of trade. In other words, they 
swell out like a porpoise or an alderman and say : "Sir, 
the traffic is one of the great national industries and 
must be let alone." 

Good and well. Let us look at it in another light. 
It costs millions of dollars to support the poor-houses 
of our land. These dollars go into the different channels 
of trade — to the brick-maker, the builder, the mechanic, 
the butcher, the baker, the grocer, etc., etc. They help 
to keep up the balance of trade. Hence, pauperism, too, 
is one of the great national industries. Let us have more 
paupers and hence benefit "the balance of trade." It is 
said that a sheriff gets from one hundred and fifty to 
three hundred dollars for hanging a man. These dollars 
go, of course, to the payment of the sheriff's debts, to the 
butcher, the baker, the grocer, etc., etc. They go into 
the different channels of trade, and hence help keep up 



ALCOHOL — THE EXTENT OP THE TRAFFIC. 27 

that mysterious "balance of trade." Hanging, then, 
must, like the drink traffic, be one of the great national 
industries, and we ought to hang more men. And right 
here it is safe to add that God knows there are plenty 
of men we could use in that way to the great advantage 
of the country. 

More money is spent each year in this land for strong 
drink than for churches and ministers, schools, universi- 
ties and teachers, newspapers and books, charities at 
home and abroad, bread and clothes. Each of these 
brings a train of blessings, the drink a train of woes. 
The drink money is an entire waste to the nation 
as well as to the individuals, and yet petition after- 
petition sent to the State Senates or to the Senate 
of the United States, signed by millions of names 
of wise men and Christian women, is only looked 
upon with a sneer, and the average legislator goes 
on with his work of protection to the makers of 
strong drink, knowing that every such act only 
makes the enemy harder to conquer, while it strikes 
a death-blow to the hearts of the women and children 
who are praying for help from the demon that has 
already robbed them of the love of a husband and 
father, and who may, after a time, turn upon them with 
inflamed brain and dead soul and drive the knife of the 
murderer to their hearts. 

Looking at the figures alone we see that this 
great nation, the wonder of a world, is built upon 



28 SUNSHINE. 

whisky casks and wine kegs, and wise men and 
true women fear that the damning foundation will 
some day topple and fall, and bring down in ruins 
the fairest nation the sun ever shone upon, unless 
legislation comes to the rescue, and drives from our 
national halls the god of Bacchus, who, as men say, 
holds the reins of our national trade. 




CHAPTER III. 

ALCOHOL WHY MEN DRINK IT. 

'HE conundrum at the head of this chapter is like 
life — it has to be given up. No reasoning man 
can strike the exact cause which impels men to 
"put an enemy to their lips to steal away their brains." 
In many cases, however, the drinkers are like the actor 
who, quoting the above line from Horatio upon the 
stage, was horrified at hearing a boy in the gallery shout 
out: "Drink away, old fellow, you're safe!" But men 
of brains do drink, as witness the lives of Poe, Payne, 
Cutter, (author of "E Pluribus Unum") Douglas, 
Seward, Yates, and others of the nation's galaxy of 
stars. 

Since alcohol went from the toilet table of the Persian 
belle to her lover's drinking pouch, men have sung the 
praise of "wine, wine, rosy wine," and fallen in drunken 
disgrace under the table, shouting its name. From 
common and occasional drunkenness they have reeled, 
blaspheming and cursing, to inebriety, and descended 
step by step into the grave of the drunkard or the 



30 SUNSHINE. 

criminal, and all the warnings of the past have been 
futile to stay the tide of debauchery and crime that has 
marched through the street of Hell to death. 

The whys and wherefores — this mighty conundrum — 
can not readily be explained. Not one man in a 
thousand confesses to a liking for the taste of strong 
drink ; hence, the only reason to form a basis for their 
serfdom is its effect — the momentary exhilaration, the 
forgetfulness of sorrow, the oblivion brought to cares 
and wounds of heart and brain. This exhilaration is 
but momentary ; it is kept up, like the steam of the 
boiler, by constant fuel, and like that boiler, the man 
begins to wear and rust, and with the first glass comes 
"the beginning of the end," found, after a time, in the 
ruined life, the blasted name, and the lonely grave with 
its handful of turf raised above the dead drunkard, or 
suicide. 

It is true, men give reasons for drinking just as men 
have reasons for the faith that is in them. They may be 
satisfying to the man himself whether the world under- 
stands them or not. Some men drink for dyspepsia, 
they tell you, while you know that, according to the 
testimony of wise men, drink and hastily-eaten food, 
with the great American pie, indigenous to this country, 
produce all the dyspepsia in the land, in the order they 
are given above. Another man drinks to strengthen 
his appetite, when it is plain to be seen that, food being 
the fuel of the human engine, it only asks for its needs, 



ALCOHOL WHY MEN BRINK IT. 31 

and if it asks little^ it needs little, until nature, which 
can be assisted by medicines, slow but sure, brings the 
engine again to perfection, when it will ask for its 
accustomed supply of fuel. Strong drink, taken before 
a meal, will enable a man to eat largely, while the 
stomach is in no condition for overwork or the man 
would not have felt the need of something to help him 
load up on. This over-supply injures the stomach worse 
than before, whereas, had the man but taken the quantity 
his stomach asked for it would the more speedily have 
been restored to working order. As it is, the whisky 
and the over-supply have laid the train for injuries which 
oft result in a serious train of diseases. 

Many men drink a glass or two of wine or other 
intoxicants immediately after meals. They drink "to 
assist digestion. " Let these men take some bread and 
meat, place them in a bottle, cover with gastric juice, and 
then place the phial in a sand-bath at the slow heat of 
98°, shaking briskly occasionally, to imitate the motion 
of the stomach, and in eight hours or less these gentle- 
men will find the contents of the bottle one pultaceous 
mass. Prepare a bottle in the same manner, add to it a 
glass of ale, wine or alcohol, in any form, treat as before, 
and in three days the food is in almost the same condition 
as when placed in the bottle, the alcohol nullifying the 
action of the gastric juice, decomposing it by precipi- 
tating pepsin, one of its principal constituents, thus 
rendering its solvent properties less efficacious. This is 



32 SUNSHINE. 

an easy lesson in "science for the million" who drink to 
assist digestion. The lesson needs no added words to 
show how fallacious is this reason for using strong 
drink. 

Perhaps these gentlemen have not heard of the ex- 
periment of Dr. Figg, a practicing physician and med- 
ical writer, of Edinburgh. This famous scientist 
gave to two dogs, six months old, five ounces of cold 
roast mutton, passing it into the oesophagus without con- 
tact with the teeth. To one of the dogs an ounce and a 
quarter of fluid spirit was administered. After several 
hours both animals were killed, dissected and their 
stomachs opened. The teetotaler stomach contained no 
meat; the stomach of the dog who drank to aid digestion 
contained the meat in its original condition. This 
experiment and the one preceding are respectfully sub- 
mitted to the man who washes his dinner down with 
strong drink, to assist digestion. 

Other men drink, so they say, to enable them to per- 
form their day's labor, feeling that without it they can 
not get through their work. Here again has nature 
asked a little rest and been denied it. Like the whip 
applied to the back of the overburdened horse, the drink 
enables the man to strain himself to the performance of a 
task that could better have been done after a short rest, 
which latter would have brought the system back to 
working condition, whereas, the drink has only stimu- 
lated for a moment, to leave the man at the end of his 



ALCOHOL — WHY MEN DRINK IT. 33 

task overstrained or worse than before. A few days or 
weeks of such treatment, and the man is found by his 
friends shut up in a darkened room, fighting for life, and 
perhaps only to again see the sunlight, a prematurely old 
man, broken down and unfitted for his life work. A 
few days* rest, when the overworked brain and muscle 
asked it, would have renewed the man. The strong 
drink and the persistent laboring have made an invalid, a 
burden to himself and his friends. 

One man drinks only because it "makes business," not 
that he likes it. It brings custom. It may bring a 
certain class of custom, but has he never thought that 
another class is driven away by his conviviality? Does 
he not know that the drinking classes are not averse to 
dealing with a sober man, while the sober classes are 
decidedly averse to dealing with a drinking man? It is 
an insult to an intelligent man to insinuate that one can 
buy his custom by "setting up the drinks." A man in 
business affairs seeks for good goods, at a fair price, 
dealt to him by courteous dealers, and his judgment is 
never blinded by "won't you step over the way and take 
something?" 

Another man drinks because of weakness, while wise 
men would tell him that by exciting the organism to un- 
usual action, when not ready for it, he but makes it, 
after a time, weaker than before, and it becomes harder 
for the medical practitioner to combat and remove the 
primal cause of the weakness. 



34 sunshine. 

But the most senseless reason of all is that of the 
young sprig of fashion, who parts his hair and his name 
in the middle and devotes the best energies of his life to 
sucking the knob on the head of his cane. A thousand 
of these exquisites boiled down might yield a tumbler of 
calves-foot jelly — nothing more. But they all drink. 
They say they do it because it is fashionable! They 
seem to forget that it is also quite customary, if not 
exactly fashionable, after a time, to bury a bloated, 
bleared, disfigured corpse in a drunkard's grave, because 
of the very fluid they put to their lips for fashion's sweet 
sake. They seem to forget that even Fashion asks for 
men of service, with brains and hearts, and that she 
looks down upon addle-pated nincompoops, whose only 
dream of life is to invent a new twist to a neck-tie and 
arise to the possibility of wearing a paper collar a whole 
week, at the end of which time it shall be as clean as 
when first put on. Josh Billings said: "I have known 
many who could thus wear a collar, but they were fit for 
nothing else." The Moloch of strong drink takes even 
these creatures and buries them out of sight, victims to 
servitude to fashion. When they are out of sight, grass 
springs up, birds sing, men work and women pray, the 
old world turns as of yore on its axis, and nothing is 
hindered by their stepping off the face of the earth 

Men who drink have each their own pet reason for 
doing so, but each is as foolish as those quoted They 
drink for heart disease^ for brain trouble,, because of too 



ALCOHOL — WHY MEN DEINK IT. 35 

much work, many because of too little work, thus wasting 
what small sum their little work brings in as a cruse of 
oil poured upon the altar of labor by a seeker after more, 
and which service to the god of occupation for muscle 
and brain only renders them unfit for service when 
called to it. They drink for headache — and drink causes 
it; they drink for toothache, for earache, for pain m the 
stomach (using Paul's prescription and quoting it to 
their casehardened consciences), for pains all over their 
frames, and then try and make wiser men believe their 
imbibitions are panaceas. They find out after a time 
that champagne brings real pain, that wine causes 
whining, and ale, ailings; that brandy smashes bring 
nose and eye smashes, and gin slings sling them all 
around, to the discomfort of bruised bones; that whisky 
punches bring other and worse punches all over the 
head ; and beer brings them to the bier, from whence, after 
the patience of friends and loved ones has been worn out, 
and hearts estranged, they go down into the grave 
"unwept, unhonored and unsung." 

In a party of friends, who were giving their reasons 
for using intoxicants, the writer found one man honest 
and true, who sneered at the reasons of others and 
sarcastically put on the cap-sheaf by saying: "You 
fellows may drink for dyspepsia, headache, backache, 
heart disease or brain troubles just as much as you want 
to, but Fm drinking for corns, I am." Similia similibus 
curantur, perhaps — corn (juice) for corns. 



36 SUNSHINE. 

Seriously speaking, there is no possibility of giving the 
answer to the conundrum at the head of this chapter. 
The various drinks containing alcohol are for sale and 
men buy and drink them. The writer for seven years 
did so. To this day he has no reason, such as a wise 
man would accept, to offer as his excuse. He never 
liked the taste of it. For a time he drank because it 
was manly ; then because he liked the company of other 
drinkers, the billiard balls and the cards; then because 
it brought forgetfulness of wrongs and sorrows; later, 
because it seemed that sunshine covered him for a time 
after the first glass, although he well knew the clouds 
would be the darker when they came; and a little later 
he drank because little by little the damning appetite 
had taken possession of body and soul, enslaving him in 
iron bonds, and everything, home, loved ones, good 
name and business, were forsaken to follow the dictates 
of the darkest, most terrible monster that ever brought 
foretaste of Hell upon earth — King Alcohol. Blindly, 
unquestioning, he gave up all that makes man man and 
life life, and followed the ignis-fatuus of strong drink out 
of home and plenty, past familiar faces and through 
well-known streets, away from hearts that loved him, 
through the curves and over the rough places of the 
street of Hell, into the den where delirium tremens held 
sway, where fleshless, gibing, grinning skeletons of the 
damned offered the pistol of the suicide for relief, and 
then through "the valley of the shadow" back into the 



ALCOHOL — WHY MEN DRINK IT. 37 

keeping of drink, constantly crying out of such hellish 
bondage for deliverance, for help, only to hear the 
mocking laugh of the demon, as throwing open the gate- 
way to even greater infamies and terrors he pulled at the 
quivering heart-strings and dragged farther and farther 
down the road of ruin no longer a man of brain and 
heart and soul, but a throbbing, pulsating mass of flesh 
and blood and bones, that knew nothing, asked nothing, 
desired nothing but another and another step, even 
though it brought him to the land of eternal darkness, 
where the Good Book has made the home for the 
drunkard who dies in his cups. 

These, then, are the only reasons the writer can assign 
for the slavery to strong drink which encompassed him 
about during those dark years. The reasons have no 
sense within them; they are but the excuses of a man 
once weak, now strong in the new-found life. But it 
seems to him that they are all the reasons, weak or 
strong, that can be offered by the man who drinks. 
They are only excuses at the best for weakness. But all 
things else thrown aside, where is the man who can 
make out a stronger case for himself in giving his 
reasons for the use of strong drink ? Such excuses as the 
writer has offered are the only "reasons" for drinking 
his experience and his research have shown him. Has 
any poor drunkard, alike a curse to himself and those 
who love him, a blot upon the green earth and a standing 
insult to God, a reason for his downfall different 



38 SUNSHINE. 

from those above given? God help you, brother, 
sorrowing and agonizing as I know you are, even as I 
have been before you, after weighing everything with 
which you may for a time stifle the questions of your 
own conscience, out of all the mass of lies and deceit, the 
true reason comes at last — you were weak and 
thought you were strong, and a little would help you and 
none would know it, and it loosened the tongue and 
quickened the brain, and the lights were bright and the 
music sweet, the company was pleasant and cares did not 
obtrude, and it was all so royal and full of pleasure that 
little by little, step by step, you took the first glass a 
man — you are taking your last glass just now with blood- 
shotten eyes, wasted form, ragged attire, ruined name 
and lost manhood, a pitiful, palsied slave. 

Man drinks — why? Because of the false glare of the 
lights at the entrance to the street of Hell. 







CHAPTER IV. 

ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 

'E have said that alcohol had its origin in Persia. 
The alcohol of the corn or maize or rye may 
have been discovered there, but in one form or 
another alcohol has been known since the days of the 
Ark, and wherever known drunkenness has been familiar. 
When poor old Noah, tired out with the building of the 
Ark that was to save himself and family from the raging 
flood of many waters, sought solace and rest from his 
arduous task, he took the vintage of the grape and made 
merry, and was the first man of history to be handed 
down to us as "an awful example." In those days 
fermented drinks were well known, for the patriarchs 
and spokesmen of God thundered out fiercest invectives 
against its use, threatening not only the drinker, but him 
who offered drink to his neighbor. 

In those old days, too, was the first temperance society 
formed, when Jonadab, son of Rechab, received and 
carried out the wishes of his father, that neither he nor 
his children should drink wine. They were rewarded, 



40 SUNSHINE. 

too, for their abstinence, for surely, if Biblical history "be 
true, the descendants of Reehab had always one to stand 
before the Lord for them, as had been promised, for their 
lives were bright and joyous and their deaths peaceful. 

From the days of the debauch of Noah, strong drink has 
worked its course with misery, crime and death; empires 
have swayed, tottered and fallen in ruins under its 
blighting touch; warriors, unused to defeats upon the 
battle fields red with the blood of thousands, have bent 
the knee in servitude and yielded up life itself to the 
demon ; kings have fallen beneath the brutes that 
roamed their kingdom ; genius, towering high above the 
common herd, has fallen in sightless ruin at the sirocco 
breath of the scourge of man. 

Nero, while all Rome, within the limits of the seven 
sacred hills, was bathed in a baptism of fire and blood, 
drunken and wild, soothed his insane brain with music 
from a tuneless fiddle, and heroes, bruised and wounded, 
dragged themselves before him that they might curse 
him ere they died. 

Antony, but for Cleopatra and her wine of pearls, 
might never have returned in disgrace from the land of 
the Arabs to fall upon his sword in the halls of the palace 
where his shameless mistress lay dead. 

In our own land, and in our own day, the story of 
strong drink and its victories is a tale so full of horror 
that it might well pass as a revised edition of the Inferno, 
for surely Dante, "the man who had been in hell/' 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 41 

according to the street boys of his time, never conjured 
from out his weird and mystic brain sights and tales 
more terrible than have been given us by the demon 
Alcohol. 

In a scattering fashion the writer desires to tell the 
story of a handful of lost souls — but a drop in the ocean 
of mankind fallen through drink. Some of the incidents 
are well remembered ; they are not given for merit of 
originality, but as guide-posts, fleshless and grinning 
though they may be, to point the youthful reader to a 
path of life that has no such monuments of woe and 
misery and terror erected at every mile-stone. They are 
presented here, also, as an argument against the constant 
cry of the young man that he is strong enough in mind 
and will to take care of himself. These men, whose 
stories are here given, held the world captive by strength 
of mind, yet that same mind was captive to strong drink 
and was conquered at the last. 

"Was ever man more singularly gifted in brain and 
mind than that weird, mystical, mysterious, metaphysical 
man of sorrows, who gave to us "The Raven," "Annabel 
Lee" and the psychological stories that are as weird and 
darksome as the recesses of the Hartz Mountains. 
Edgar Allan Poe was born to write his name as high as 
Shakespeare's, when he had reached life's fullest years, 
but strong drink stepped in and robbed us of him in 
years that were yet youthful ; wrapped him round about 
with all the horrible drapery of delirium tremens and 



42 SUNSHINE. 

sent him hurtling into the kingdom of Forgetfulness, 
while even yet his name and works were lingering on 
the lips of TTisdorn. 

And the young man, who has four ounces of brain 
where Poe had pounds, listens to the story of his 
downfall and death in a Baltimore prison cell, and 
raising the poisoned chalice to his lips, laughs out : "Poor 
Poe, he ought to have controlled his appetite. He 
should have been stronger. I can tell when I've had 
enough, and stop." But he does not finally stop until 
the same death Poe suffered steps in and itself stops the 
mechanism of life and scores another lost life for strong 
drink. A brain and will power such as possessed by 
Poe is the heritage of a nation but once in a handful of 
centuries, and to the man whose life is not seared over 
with selfishness comes a consciousness of his own weak- 
ness, and he knows that if strong drink can conquer a 
will power like Poe's, his own is only safe as far from 
the tempter as yonder star, lighting the road to glory, is 
from the drowsy world now bending and swaying in its 
midnight slumber. 

There are those who do not believe Poe was a genius; 
they will take exception to the above thoughts. 

"Why do you hate me?" said a glow-worm to a 
caterpillar. 

"Why do you shine?" answered the caterpillar. 

Years ago a struggling singer sang a song. The 
world has been the better ever since. Hearts have been 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 43 

lighter and souls brighter for the words of the dead poet. 
It has been sung wherever civilization has rescued melody 
from the heathen and his tom-tom. It will be sung so 
long as this firmament presents its green face to the stars 
to be kissed, and then, when the world shall be rolled 
up as a mighty scroll full of past deeds, dark and bright, 
to be placed in the archives of eternity, that song will be 
the last thing to leave hearthstones with lares and 
penates, and country lanes, and city streets, and will 
ascend through the atmosphere above us to the clouds, 
and there, stepping from cloud to cloud, from star to 
star, it will rise higher and higher, and, finding the 
windows of Heaven open for its reception, will enter the 
land of the leal and by angels and archangels and the 
choir of the unseen, be chanted as long as Heaven lasts 
— forever and for aye. Can any other song be meant 
than "Home, Sweet Home?" 

John Howard Payne, who thus sang for time and 
eternity, was a man gifted with rare powers of mind and 
soul; strong and self-reliant, his will was alike the pride 
of himself and his friends. But the demon drink came 
round him, hid in the dainty glasses of society, and 
claimed him as a slave. He fell, step by step, and 
was finally sent to Tunis, Africa, as United States 
Consul, his friends and President Fillmore thinking the 
journey and the new associations would save him. A 
few weeks later he died of drink, in a strange land, with 
strange faces bending over him, with a strange unrest 



44 SUNSHINE. 

eating at his soul, the while it told in whispered tones 
of the "what might have been." To-day a lonely grave 
on the coast of the sea contains all that is left of the 
singer-poet. His only requiem — the singing of the sea 
birds flying shoreward ; his only dirge — the moaning of 
the waves. 

Brother mine, set down your glass. Yeur will is 
strong, your brain capable, but the demon that laid this 
mighty giant of poesy low is stronger than you. Fly 
him, and seek the path of life wherein his footsteps are 
never heard. 

George Washington Cutter, who in spirit-stirring lines 
gave his country its nearest approach to a national anthem, 
"E Pluribus TJnum" or "Many in One," was another 
genius of giant will who bowed his neck in the yoke of 
the tyrant that you, poor boy, believe yourself strong 
enough to conquer. Of commanding appearance, match- 
less physique, and a strength of will easily discernible in 
the magnetic shock he gave out by a grasp of the hand, 
George Cutter believed the pleasures of wine would 
never turn to ashes of roses on his lips. He could hold 
a man at arm's length — it would certainly be easy to hold 
at a safe distance the siren who sang from the crystal 
depths of the goblet. But there came a time when the 
author of "E Pluribus Unum," "The Song of Steam" and 
many other rare poems, begged a dime of the passer-by 
for bread, and with it swelled the till of the dram-shop 
keeper. There came a time to this giant of brain and 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 45 

muscle when he slept in rags in the gutter, and one fair 
day, when the world was full of brightness, and lesser 
men, who had shunned the tempter, were winning 
crowns in life's battle, poor George Cutter was 
picked from a gutter of Covington, Kentucky, only 
to die in a few short hours "of whisky and starva- 
tion." And when that young life went out, if Hell is a 
reality, there was such a Saturnalia of devils in its 
gloomy dungeons as must have rung to Heaven itself. 
A head to wear a crown of roses low in the reeking filth 
of the streets, scourged of thorns. Brother mine, will 
you not take warning now, or must a weary brain delve 
further into chambers of mind and memory and bring 
forth other illustrations of the power of strong drink 
and man's weakness ? 

The writer has been all his active life in the newspaper 
profession. From it he has gotten his overweening 
truthfulness, and from the experiences of his professional 
life he has drawn many illustrations of rum's power. 
As police court reporter, in the city of Cincinnati, he 
has seen before the bar of the court state senators, 
ministers of the gospel, lawyers, and in one instance a 
poet of fame in both hemispheres, on trial for drunken- 
ness, and sentenced to the work-house as expiation for 
their crime against the laws of God and man. Surely 
such men were strong in will, strong as you, brother, 
but learn here that Alcohol has never yet bowed 
conquered, except before the power of Total Abstinence, 



46 SUNSHINE. 

Poor, genial, witty Charles Lamb, the "Elia" of such 
rare essays, cries out to be heard from the other world. 
Hear from his lips the testimony of man to the power 
of appetite: 

"The waters have gone over me, but out of the black 
depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those 
who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could 
the youth, to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious 
as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some 
newly-discovered paradise, look into my desolation and 
be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a 
man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open 
eyes and a passive will- — to see his destruction and have 
no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way 
emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied 
out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time 
when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous 
spectacle of his own self-ruin ;— could he see my feverish 
eyes, feverish with last night's drinking, and feverishly 
looking for this night's repetition of the folly; could he 
feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly 
with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered — it were 
enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the 
earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation; to 

make him clasp his teeth 

and not undo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run through 'em," 
There are thousands, brother, to talk to you in 
language sorrowful as this; you have heard the recital 



ALCOHOL WHAT IT HAS DONE 47 

before, but you believe in a middle ground on which you 
may safely stand and indulge in your destroyer. Read, 
then, further from the dead essayist: 

"But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence 
and the excess which kills you? For your sake, reader, 
and that you may never attain to my own experience, 
with pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that there is 
none, none that I can find." 

There is safety no place, no where, but through total 
abstinence. "Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the 
only amulet to ward off the evil results of strong drink. 

Poor Dan Rouzer! Who in the temperance work has 
not heard of him? The "drunken printer" of Dayton, 
Ohio. The terror of friends when drunk, beloved of all 
when sober. A man who was all heart and brain, and 
from whose door no beggar ever went refused. A giant 
among pigmies in all that makes men noble. Who does 
not remember the night of praise and thanksgiving in 
the city of Dayton when Dan Rouzer "put on the blue" 
and signed the pledge? Surely there must have been 
rejoicing over the hundredth lamb that night in God's 
Golden Gardens. Many thought he would fall, but 
month followed month, and Brother Dan kept firm in 
the faith. He took the field as a temperance worker and 
the thousands who signed the pledge at his meetings can 
never forget his earnestness, his eloquence, and the great 
heart of the man, that seemed to sit enthroned upon his 
very face. There came a dark day and Dan fell, but 



48 SUNSHINE. 

only to rise at once, seek the grace of God, and work 
harder than ever for fallen humanity. In conjunction 
with another saved man, George "W. Mowry, likewise a 
printer and a Christian, with heart like unto Dan's, he 
started The Life Boat, a monthly temperance paper 
whose mission was "to rescue the perishing/' and then 
with brain and type and tongue Dan Rouzer fought 
strong drink. How w T ell he fought, let saved manhood, 
happy wives and well-dressed children all over the 
State tell. 

About the first of July, 1879, Brother Rouzer, tired 
and w r orn out with doing three men's work, took a glass 
of drink to strengthen him that he might finish a task. 
He knew it not, but, laughing at a victory, Death sat at 
the bottom of the amber drops. The one glass was the 
spark of fire to the train, and Dan Rouzer, forgetting 
wife, child, friends, good name, business, and all but the 
demon once more holding him in its grasp, reeled on to 
the other life. On the 14th of the month, with a 
drunken comrade, our brother went some miles out of 
Dayton to bathe in the Miami. Once in its depths he 
was seized with cramps, and unable to help himself, and 
with a companion too frightened and too far under the 
influence of drink to aid him, Dan Rouzer sank to death. 
The clear waters of the Miami wrapped themselves about 
a living, breathing, pulsating man, and after smothering 
him with deceitful kisses threw back upon the shore a 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 49 

swollen, disfigured mass of inert matter that had been a 
hero. 

Strong Drink — demon incarnate — thou art indicted 
before the bar of God for the murder of this man; thou 
and thy partners. Those who vote for thy protection, 
those who vote into office thy protectors, those who cry, 
Lord! Lord! and yet are not working for thy downfall, 
these are thy partners, and they and thou art indicted to 
answer unto the r Searcher for the death of this man. 
The writer indicts thee in the name of a bloated corpse, 
a ruined life, a blighted home, a heart-broken wife, a 
fatherless child. He indicts thee as the direct cause of 
all this misery and darkness, and let no man stand up 
to defend thee. Thy case is beyond defense. Satan, 
reeking with all the fumes of Tartarus, is yet man 
enough to hide his face and tremble at the thought of thy 
damning powers. Thou art before the bar, thy partners 
are with thee, and a God of wisdom shall pronounce 
upon thee and those who make thee for dollars, to the 
ruin of lives, a doom compared to which that pronounced 
against Lucifer was Eden. 

Thou reeking, rotten, soulless, heartless, brainless devil 
of drink, as sure as the stars are eternal, and the 
promises of God are as mighty rocks, against which the 
tempest beats in vain, thy fate is sealed. Beside the 
mangled corpse of Dan Rouzer a million friends of 
humanity stand to-day, and each, laying a hand upon 
that face upon which thou hast written thy horrible 



50 SUNSHINE. 

name, has sworn, God helping him, to fight with pen 
and brain and tongue, with heart and soul, thyself and 
all thy cohorts, until thou art offered up root and branch 
a burnt offering, hissing, spitting, cursing, and blas- 
pheming, upon the altar of redemption for thy victims, 
and through the smoke arising from thy foul and rotten 
carcass, Oh! Alcohol the King, there shall be seen 
painting, with golden glare upon the dome of Heaven 
itself, the mene, mene, tehel upharsin of thy fate, the 
finger of Jehovah himself, and underneath, where all 
the world may see, shall be written by Christ, who died 
for all mankind : "It is ended. Henceforth I claim my 
kingdom and my people/' and w^hile cherubim and 
seraphim above and a saved world beneath are chanting 
their redemption, thy pestering, polluted spirit shall be 
assailed by thy victims of all the ages and tortured a 
thousand times w T orse than ever thou didst torture thy 
poor slaves; thou and thy helpers and supporters shalt 
be driven like the Devil into the sea — a sea of eternal 
hatred, walled so high by rocks of temperance and 
strength that never again shalt thou rise to face man. A 
just God has said it, thou Demon Drink ! 

"The dark and bloody ground," Kentucky, has 
furnished the nation its share of men of genius, and from 
the ranks strong drink has taken the greatest and the 
best. Poor Tom Marshall, w r ith an intellect like 
unto few men, sank a beggar under its curse, and George 
D. Prentice, poet, wit and newspaper man, also fell a 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 51 

victim, his life ending just where the life of genius 
begins, an offering upon the shrine of conviviality, 
which has claimed so many of "the rare old southern 
gentlemen." The only real wit our country has ever 
produced — excepting, of course, that genial man of 
mirth, Charles Farrar Browne, "Artemus Ward," — 
Prentice was the life and soul of his friends, and like 
others who claimed such distinction, fell, because of fealty 
to that friendship which can only find vent in the wine 
cup and the night of debauch. With his constitution, 
George D. Prentice should have had the silver of eighty 
years upon his head. At forty, with constitution 
wrecked by drink, he died. 

Brother mine, these men had more of will power 
than you or I will ever possess. Let us remember 
that power greater than theirs and shun it while yet 
it is day. 

The beautiful cemetery on the lake at Chicago has a 
monument kissing the clouds, whereon the people of the 
great State of Illinois have told their love for their 
hero sleeping beneath, "the little giant," Stephen A. 
Douglas. But that costly shaft fails to tell that that lion 
heart, electric brain and giant will were conquered by 
strong drink. The War-Governor of Illinois, too, poor 
Dick Yates, almost a god in the hearts of his people, 
died one fair morning in St. Louis, in a great hotel, 
without a friendly face above him or a friendly hand 
smoothing his pillow, the room peopled with the demons 



52 SUNSHINE. 

of delirium conjured to curse his dying momgnts by 
alcohol, the master of Illinois' greatest man. 

The writer believes in animal magnetism, or human 
electricity, a power centered in the brain, operating the 
will and capable of wonderful development. Himself 
strongly possessed of this element, he once believed that 
with it he could control, easiest of all things else, an 
appetite for drink. So far would he go and, calling will 
power to his aid, go no farther. But he found himself 
a babe, arrayed against a giant. He found, after seven 
years' servitude, a master whose slightest wish was law, 
and will power was crushed, and strength was gone, and 
he was the most miserable slave on God's green earth. 
Clouds drove off the sunshine and life was one great sea 
of tempest and of gloom, and his frail bark was buffeted 
at the sport of the waves of temptation on the sea of 
Drink wheresoever the monster Alcohol demanded. The 
rocks of delirium tore his vessel, shattered it constantly, 
and never until the beacon of total abstinence was 
reached did he find safety, sunshine and strength. 
When the light first came, freeing himself of the load 
of his taskmaster, he threw himself into the sea, and 
buffeted the waves to reach the shore. Kind words 
were extended, hearts were opened, the path was 
pointed out, and with God's strength to guide, the 
bruised feet and aching heart and crushed will went out 
upon the path of right, only to find help at every 
step. The thorns no longer pierced the feet of the 



ALCOHOL — WHAT IT HAS DONE. 53 

wayfarer — the path was covered with flowers. The 
clouds disappeared as the glorious sun of the new life 
shone free and fair above the mountains of saved man- 
hood, and thus out of the storm of appetite and slavery- 
he has come step by step to the heights, and 
looking down in the valley upon broken hearts and 
bruised feet and ruined will-power, he holds aloft 
the pledge of abstinence and cries, "Brother mine, come 
up higher ! " 

There is but the one path to the heights. Moderation 
in drink as surely leads to immoderation in suffering, 
as moderation in all moral sin leads to punishment. 
There comes a time to all drinking men when the 
occasional glass must come oftener to satisfy the 
crying stomach and the hungry appetite, and step 
by step, one by one, the glasses come oftener and 
oftener, until the chain of habit, link by link, is 
forged around a man of heart and brain and soul, 
only to turn him to a downcast, despairing slave, 
to live his life under the clouds of gloom, which replace 
the sunshine of the past. 

And now, brother, are not these illustrations 
sufficient? Are you stronger than these men of 
genius who have died victims of strong drink? Will 
you risk life eternal upon the cast of a die manipulated 
by the arch-fiend himself? Come up into the heights. 
Rid Satan get behind you, and, throwing off the 



54 SUNSHINE. 

load of sin and curses, rise step by step up the 
mountain of manhood, and stand beside the millions 
of saved men on the crest, where the angel of mercy 
is granting rewards each hour, and the tired eye 
may see the windows of Heaven opening and the 
cherubim of the Beyond pointing to the land of the 
By-and-By. Freed from the sound of the curses 
and groans of the lost, here in an atmosphere pure 
and sweet as a maiden's prayer, redolent with the 
perfume from the Golden Gardens of God, you may 
hear the songs of the saved and the chorus of the 
unseen in a glad halleluiah of triumph over victory 
won for time and eternity. 




CHAPTER V. 

ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PEO AND CON. 

fHE writer is no logician. Like an old country 
friend he can't "argefy." Those who love logic? 
and argument, therefore, will find little to their 
taste in this work, unless out of facts they can draw logic 
and out of plain truths argument. In a previous 
chapter an attempt has been made to show the fallacy of 
drinking for health. The argument was weak — weak as 
camp-meeting coffee. Other writers could perhaps make 
such arguments strong as boarding-house butter or a 
politician's love of office. The writer merely told what 
he knew by experience and research, leaving the de- 
ductions and conclusions to be drawn by the reader. It 
will be much the same in this chapter. • 

The great mass of temperance workers are laboring 
for prohibition, not to any great extent through a third 
political party, although the prohibition party, so-called, 
has thousands of supporters voting and working more for 
the principle itself than because they expect victory, but 
by the education of public sentiment to such an extent as 



56 SUNSHINE. 

to compel the two great political parties of the day to 
throw overboard from their political ship their figure- 
head Bacchus, and allow themselves to be purified by the 
cold-water deluge. The temperance people, as a mass, 
demand prohibition, but they will attempt to gain it 
through this education, step by step, from local option 
to success. The day is not far distant when, if our cause 
does not flag, Democrats and Republicans as well will 
nominate men of temperance principles in answer to the 
popular clamor for such nominees. These men, true to 
the party of their choice, will also be true to humanity 
and the appeals of conscience. They will first grant us 
local option. It has been a success wherever introduced. 
It will decrease the revenue of the government and 
likewise decrease the expenditures of the State. Poor- 
houses, penitentiaries, county asylums and jails will 
require but a tithe of their former financial needs, and 
the surplus thus obtained may be drawn by the general 
treasury to supply the deficiency of the decrease of 
revenue from strong drink. The State will have more 
muscle and brain labor to swell its wealth and enable it 
to make up to the general government the internal 
revenue decrease. This being proved by experience, 
prohibition will follow. Democracy and Republicanism 
will still hold their own and purity in politics will 
replace demagogism and rascality so rampant to-day, 
because of the removal of the prime cause of such 
disgrace. 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 57 

And right here men cry out your reasoning is absurd. 
Prohibition will cause a decline in values and a loss in 
property to the State, let alone the revenue decrease. 
Good and well; let us see how Maine has suffered. 
According to Hon. Nelson Dingly, Jr., in a recent 
speech at Portland, we learn that in 1832 the consump- 
tion of strong drink in that State was about twenty 
dollars per head — man, woman and child. The average 
to-day in the United States is sixteen dollars per capita. 
The State of Maine has one hundred town agencies 
where liquor is sold for mechanical and medicinal 
purposes. Last year the revenue from these agencies 
was fifteen cents per head, man, woman and child, and 
taking the amount sold illegally in the State, the per 
capita sum is raised to one dollar, or one-sixteenth the 
general average in the country, Now, according to this, 
Maine must be impoverished. But, as the proportion 
of Maine's liquor bill is now but five hundred thousand 
dollars, where with free liquor it would be thirteen 
million dollars, there seems to be a saving somewhere of 
twelve million five hundred thousand dollars, and Maine 
is just that much richer to-day for prohibition. 
Portland, the largest city in the State, gained in valu- 
ation of property last year four hundred and eighty 
thousand dollars, while Boston, the city of ethics and 
beans and free rum, lost seventy million dollars in 
valuation. The twelve million five hundred thousand 
dollars saved by Maine is spent for increased comforts 



58 SUNSHINE. 

of life, going directly to her business men, instead of a 
large percentage of it going to wholesale liquor dealers 
outside the State, and the balance into the internal 
revenue receipts of the government at large. Further- 
more, the prison and asylum expenses of Maine are the 
least in proportion of any State in the Union. So where 
has the State suffered by prohibition? 

Take a single town, for instance, where strong drink 
does not come. Vineland, New Jersey, built on a foun- 
dation of prohibition, has ten thousand population. Its 
police bill two years ago was fifty dollars and its pauper 
expenses four dollars, whereas a city of the same size 
with free liquor spent twenty thousand dollars for police 
and paupers. Where has Vineland suffered through 
prohibition ? 

Marblehead, Massachusetts, has sixty grog-shops w T hile 
Beverly, in the same state, has none. Marblehead 
recently had two hundred and sixty-one persons in the 
poor-house while Beverly was not represented by a 
single pauper. Thus the support of two hundred and 
sixty-one paupers fell upon the taxpayers of Marblehead 
while Beverly taxpayers saved their dollars because of 
prohibition, brought about in this instance by local 
option. 

It may not be known generally that among drinking 
people the mortality of children is greatly in excess of 
that among temperance people, due to the inheritance of 
enfeebled, diseased constitutions, want of attention, and 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 59 

the little luxuries of the sick-room which can not be 
bought when every dime has gone to the saloon-keeper. 
In four years twenty-six children out of every one 
hundred under one year of age died in Marblehead and 
Salem, while in Beverly and Danvers, temperance towns, 
the mortality was but twelve in one hundred, or a 
difference of over one hundred per cent. Of children 
under five years of age, there died during those years 
fifty-two out of one hundred in Salem, thirty-one at 
Marblehead, and but eighteen out of one hundred in 
Danvers and nineteen in Beverly. Thus does strong 
drink murder the innocents while its supporters aver 
that it gives health and strength and power of mind and 
body. It is not hard to deduce an argument for 
prohibition from the above figures. 

A town or city becomes wealthy m proportion as its 
municipal expenses are light or heavy. Any reduction 
that can be made in those expenses adds to the wealth of 
the city. Suppose, for instance, New York could be 
made a temperance city by prohibition, the sixty 
million dollars spent there annually for drink would only 
go into more legitimate and healthy channels of trade, to 
the betterment of the people, morally, physically and 
spiritually. These millions spent by rum-cursed souls 
would be spent for luxuries and more of necessities, and 
health would replace disease, while a great reduction 
could be made in the police expenses, which are now 
six million dollars per annum. This would add to the 



60 SUNSHINE. 

city's wealth, as well as the increase of brain and muscle 
power, gained from sober artisans. There were arrested 
in 1877, for all crimes in the city of New York, 84,399, 
of which number 61,670 were arrested for intoxication. 
The expense of trial and support of these sixty odd 
thousand, under prohibition, would be saved to the city 
as well as the expenses of greater crimes caused by 
strong drink, and the city's wealth thus materially 
increased. And yet, in the face of these figures, in the 
face of the fact that eight-tenths of the crimes in our 
land and eight-tenths of the pauperism are the outgrowth 
of the drink traffic, in the face of the fact that this 
pauperism and crime cost the nation by one hundred 
million dollars more money than is received from the 
internal revenue department for spiritous, vinous and 
malt liquors alone, friends of alcohol cry out against 
temperance principles as threatening to ruin the country. 
Let the lover of argument and logic study these figures 
for himself. 

When Gladstone was Prime Minister of the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain, a body of brewers 
remonstrated with him on his attitude to their traffic, 
telling him how much the nation would lose should the 
revenue from drink be restricted. His answer contains 
a direct reply to those who believe strong drink to be 
the financial salvation of a country : — a Gentlemen, you 
need not give yourselves any trouble about the revenue 
The question of revenue must never stand in the way 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PEO AND CON. 61 

of needed reforms. Besides, with a sober population, 
not wasting their earnings, I will know where to obtain 
the revenue." 

The truth in a nutshell : A nation of producers will 
supply all needed revenues legitimately, while a nation 
of drunken, squandering idlers must do it through 
illegitimate and soul-destroying channels. 

There are many people claiming to be temperance 
people whose temperance principles go no further than 
hatred to whisky. They drink wine and beer, but cry 
out against the stronger fluids, and at the same time 
laugh at the "fanatics" who decry the use of wine and 
lager. The true temperance man hates cider twenty- 
four hours old as he hates rum. The only difference 
between them is in the size of the devil within them. 
Cider will "make drunk" assure as alcohol will if the 
atmosphere has but had a chance to play in its golden 
depths. As Dr. Reynolds has said, "Cider is the Devil's 
kindling wood." The writer has been so drunk on cider 
that tasted sweet (made sweet artificially after fermen- 
tation) that he walked more crooked than a zigzag fence. 
He got full benefit of the road tax in going home, for 
he covered every foot of the road. He had to stand an 
hour waiting to jump into bed as it swum round the 
room at lightning speed. He got up the next morning, 
after communing with "devils great and devils small, 
devils little and devils tall" all night, with a head feeling 
as large as a tub, a tongue thick as starch, eyes red as 



62 SUNSHINE. 

fire and a soul shrunk and shriveled and fearing 
every sound. He wasn't intoxicated, of course, for 
cider won't intoxicate. It was merely an hallucination 
of head, and brain, and tongue, and eye, and stomach, 
perhaps. 

It has been sworn time and time again that beer will 
not intoxicate. The thousands who have reeled home 
suffering the torments of the damned from too much beer 
are anxious to know how these swearers got their 
knowledge. The drinking man, w T ho knows, believes 
these men to have either cast-iron stomachs or cast-iron 
consciences, one or the other. According to Albert Day, 
M. D., Superintendent of the Washington Home for 
Inebriates, eight-tenths of seven thousand cases of 
inebriety that have come under his notice were caused 
by wine and beer, and yet wine and beer are temperance 
drinks. 

The writer has never known a young man who 
commenced on beer who did not take whisky sooner or 
later, and who did not time and time again become 
intoxicated on the beer. The only difference, as has 
been said, is in the size of the devil. In beer there is 
about six per cent, of alcohol; in cider, from four to ten 
per cent.; in w T ine, thirteen to twenty-seven per cent.; 
whisky, twenty-five to fifty-three per cent.; gin, fifty-one 
per cent.; rum, fifty-three per cent., and brandy about 
the same. Enough beer or cider is all that is needed to 
intoxicate. 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 63 

Many men attack the temperance worker because of 
his denial that strong drink is a valuable medicinal 
agent. It is to these men a panacea for every ail and 
ache and ill, and hence their antagonism to the 
"fanatic" who thinks he can get well without the 
use of alcohol in any shape. Time was when physicians 
largely prescribed alcohol, especially for those suffering 
from weakness and to women during the illness 
preceding and following confinement. They made 
drunkards by the thousand. This practice, however, 
has latterly been decreasing and will speedily, it is 
believed, die out altogether, as has bleeding, the 
use of the knife, and the prescribing of calomel, 
practices so largely indulged in by the medical 
fraternity years ago. It has been found that the 
strength given to a patient by whisky was only 
temporary — that it caused undue exertion of the 
organism for a time, finally leaving it weaker than 
before. After the excitement of the drink had 
left the system it was found that no element of strength 
remained to be built upon, coming from the drink 
itself. The increased power lasted only so long as 
the volatile essence of the alcohol was in the 
system. The fluid remaining contained nothing to 
give strength. The physician, therefore, found that 
calisaya, iron and certain phosphates did, in fact, what 
alcohol did in theory, and so the alcohol has largely 
been dropped. Even in delirium tremens, which was 



64 SUNSHINE. 

formerly treated almost entirely by whisky, it has 
been found that chloral hydrate is in every way 
superior, and the hair of the dog is not used to cure its 
bite so frequently as heretofore. 

In Great Britain two thousand physicians declared 
"that total and universal abstinence from alcoholic 
beverages of all sorts would greatly contribute to the 
health, the prosperity and happiness of the human 
race." 

Dr. Willard Parker, of Xew York, says: "Alcohol 
has no place in the healthy system, but is an irritant 
poison, producing a diseased condition of body and 
mind." 

The idea of such a poison restoring health to the 
enfeebled system ! 

Dr. Ezra M. Hunt: "Alcohol is not shown to have a 
definite food value by any of the usual methods of 
chemical analysis or physiological investigation. Its 
use as a medicine is chiefly that of a cardiac stimulant 
and often admits of substitution." 

Dr. James Edmunds: "It is a fact which can not be 
disputed that diseases of the liver, diseases of the lungs, 
diseases of the tissues of the body are induced directly 
by the use of alcohol." 

These diseases are the stock in trade of half the 
drinkers in the land who drink for their health. 

B. W. Richardson, M. D.: "It is an agent as potent 
for evil as it is helpless for good." 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 65 

W. B. Carpenter, M. I). F. E. S., who won the 
English prize of one hundred guineas for his essay 
on "The Use of Alcohol," came to the conclusion 
that alcohol, except in most remote cases, was of no 
benefit, but a positive injury, as a medicine, and in 
cases where it was of benefit, it was such more in 
the nature of a palliative than a cure. He recom- 
mended, therefore, that it never be used until every- 
thing else had been tried and found wanting and 
then used as any other poison, never to be taken 
unadvised by the laity, but only under the direct care 
of the physician. 

"Were this to be followed out, the great majority 
of cases in this country where men are drinking 
for various diseases would speedily be cured, as no 
intelligent practitioner would prescribe alcohol for 
more than one man out of one thousand who are 
now prescribing it for themselves. According, then, 
to intelligent physicians the w r orld over, alcohol is 
neither a stimulant, a food, nor a medicine, save in the 
latter instance in cases the most rare. What, then, 
becomes of our friends who only "look upon the 
wine when it is red" for the sake of their health? 
They must either give up the practice or acknowledge 
that they drink it for its effect or for the same 
reason the poor, trembling, ragged drunkard uses it — 
because he has not the strength to let it alone 



66 SUNSHINE. 

and knows not from whence the strength can be 
obtained. 

There are certain defenders of the moderate use of 
intoxicants, moreover, who go to the Bible for authority 
to indulge, and because wine to be drank is mentioned 
therein, and said to "make merry the heart of man," 
they use it day after day ignorantly imagining that the 
wine of these days, full of devils to the beak of the 
goblet, is the same kind of wine used and recommended 
by the Master. 

"'My dear sir," said a pompous minister, "Christ made 
wine at the wedding feast at Cana and recommended it 
to be drank. Shall I, then, refuse to obey a command 
of my Master?" 

The writer has studied the character of Christ, 
and loves and reveres the Great Teacher who died 
that man might live. But he has read his 
denunciations of strong drink; the curses pronounced 
against those who use it; against those who sell 
or give it to their neighbors, and he believes Christ 
was consistent through all the years he walked the 
earth. He does not believe that Christ would 
denounce "the wine that makes drunken" on the 
one hand and make it and pass it around on 
the other. It is blasphemy to assert that the 
wine of the wedding was intoxicating — full of devils. 
The Master was a true one; he would give nothing 
to his beloved but w T hat w r as good for them., and 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 67 

he denounced wine in no measured terms, as did his 
Father. 

"You drink wine, because Christ drank it, do 
you ?" asked a guest at the table of the pompous 
minister, 

"I do," was the reply. 

"Do you eat barley bread ?" said the guest. 

"Certainly not," was the reply. 

"Why, may I ask ?" 

"I do not like it," rejoined the minister. 

"Well, then, you are not true to Christ. You drink 
wine because he made and drank it, and yet 
you refuse to eat barley loaves when the Master 
performed one of his greatest miracles with a few 
fishes and a handful of loaves of barley bread, and your 
only reason is that you do not like barley bread; 
therefore, you must like the wine, and you only follow 
the Master in so far as such following pleases your 
appetite." 

The pompous minister changed the subject. 

But these men are constantly crying out, "Christ made 
wine therefore I will drink it." 

Brother, we have no objection to your drinking wine 
made by the Master, but we have an idea that 
the strong drink of the present day, cursed with 
devils of all sizes and natures, was never made or 
blessed by Christ our Savior, therefore we ask that 
you stop drinking man's wine and wait till Christ 



68 SUNSHINE. 

comes down and makes some more. We shall drink 
Christ's wine, but not till "the sweet bye-and-bye," 
when at the banquet table, spread in the Garden 
of Bliss, surrounded by the loved who have gone 
on before, we shall drink full glasses of the wine 
of the promises fulfilled. We wait the day 
willingly. Oh, brothers in the dark, come into the 
light and wait with us ! 

Those who defend drinking from Paul are another 
class who use the Bible as a salve for wounded 
conscience* Say they : 

"Didn't Paul advise Timothy to take a little wine for 
his stomach's sake?" 

True, brother, but Paul, like many of the physicians 
of to-day, may have been greatly mistaken in his 
diagnosis of Timothy's case, and consequently made a 
grievous error in the prescription. Besides, we have 
no record to show that Timothy followed Paul's 
advice, and if he did, we'll warrant a new hat he 
didn't go up to a public bar, ask for four fingers 
of Robinson County bourbon and swallow it down 
without winking, repeating the dose every twenty 
minutes, as you do, brother. Canon Farrar say$ 
that those who defend drunkenness from Timothy 
are the sworn brothers of those who defend slavery 
out of Philemon. 

Said an Irishman to a countryman wearing the. 
temperance badge : 



ALCOHOL — ARGUMENTS PKO AND CON. 69 

"You're a nice man, ain't you, signing the cold-water 
pledge ! Don't the Bible tell you different ? " 

"Where does the Bible say so, anyhow?" 

"Didn't Paul say to Timothy to take a little wine for 
his stomach's sake ? Answer me that now." 

"Well, what if he did. My name ain't Timothy and 
there's nothing the matter with my stomach." 

Or, as the little girl said when told of Paul's 
prescription for Timothy's stomach's sake : 

"Please, sir, I hain't dot no tummick ache." 

The Bible nowhere recommends drunkenness. It 
points with a finger of eternal significance to a motto 
blazing above the gates of the Beyond, "No drunkard 
shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven." It tells the 
wine-bibber not to look upon the demon when it giveth 
its color to the cup and moveth itself aright. "At the 
last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." 
And yet men, ministers even, defend moderation, 
claiming that temperance means "the moderate use 
of all things." Temperance means the moderate use 
of all good things, total abstinence from all evil 
things, and the logic and argument of all the 
moderate drinkers and friends of moderation in the 
world cannot change that belief in the mind of the 
saved man who has felt the bite of the serpent and the 
sting of the adder. 

When friends of moderation can pick out the men 
who will be strong enough to drink through life 



70 SUNSHINE 

moderately without once falling by the wayside, 
then, and not till then, will the public eye be 
directed to the champions of moderation. But, there 
comes in all the trouble. Who can tell which one of a 
dozen boys, taking their first drink together, is going to 
drink moderately all his life and never be injured by it? 
Only one out of the dozen is going to escape, and no 
man can tell which it is until the entire twelve have 
gone to the end of life's road. There are men so 
constituted that strong drink never becomes a curse to 
them; but they are one in many. They are the false 
beacons Satan sets up to lure others upon the dangerous 
rocks of appetite. 

One man in the dozen may thus be directly freed 
from the curse of drink; the rest suffer. One is 
murdered, another commits a crime, a third destroys 
himself, a fourth and a fifth die of delirium tremens, 
a sixth and seventh die while young from diseases 
brought on by too much strong drink, an eighth 
and a ninth die a little later on from the same 
cause, a tenth becomes rich, but bloated and bleared, 
drops off with heart disease, leaving as an inheritance 
to his children enfeebled constitutions and weak brains, 
the eleventh dies in the poor-house, and the twelfth 
apparently is not harmed. But it was only found 
out at the end of the twelve lives who the 
lucky man was to be. It is too great a risk to 
run, brother. No cold-water men ever yet died of 



ALCOHOL ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON. 71 

delirium tremens; they are seldom murdered, seldom 
commit murder or suicide, seldom die in the poor- 
house, and usually lead lives of happiness and 
sunshine. 

Moderation is a snare, a false light. Total absti- 
nence is a brightly-burning beacon of hope and 
promise. You can make no mistakes in adopting it 
for life's talisman. 




CHAPTER VI. 

MODEKATE DEINKING. 

CAN drink or let it alone," is a remark heard 
on all sides by the temperance workers. It 
comes, as a general thing, from young men just 
starting on the road to ruin, and from older heads who 
have gotten so far that they love the glass and would 
not give it up, believing, however, that they could easily 
do so if they tried. They are already slaves, but know 
it not. They have never tried to "let it alone," there- 
fore they think they could do so if they would. They 
never do let it alone and die the victims of strong drink. 
The young men could if they would, at the start, "let it 
alone." Except through great stress brought to bear by 
interested friends and temperance revivalism, the young 
man does not essay the trial. He goes on farther and 
farther down the road, becoming, in course of time, a 
veritable slave to drink. It is easy to believe in one's 
own prowess of mind and muscle, especially when neither 
has been tried. The mind is there, the muscle is there, 
hence strength of will and strength of muscle must be 



MODERATE DRINKING. 73 

there. Never having tried the strength of will in 
throwing off the yoke of drink, the young man boasts of 
his prowess and will never go too far. But when he 
commences to "let it alone," if he has but drank long 
enough, he begins to see the folly of his boast. Strong 
drink does not willingly relinquish its hold. There is a 
struggle for the mastery, and when the victim does win 
the contest it is only after a fight, heroic as was that of 
Leonidas, at Thermopylae. Oftener, however, the man 
gives up the struggle and yields himself to his destroyer, 
feeling it impossible to combat longer. 

A man cannot "drink or let it alone" after the demon 
has once gotten hold, unless by the grace of God he 
gathers new strength, and by the assistance of friends he 
has a hiding-place in homes and hearts where the 
Drink Demon dare not come. And then it is a fight 
for life and death. Loss of appetite, sleepless nights, 
unstrung nerves, incapacity for social or business 
occupations, aches and pains innumerable, with dis- 
ordered brain and fearful heart, are the experiences 
of the man week after week. It is the effort nature is 
making to throw off the poisons of the drink. Every 
bit of the organism, polluted by drink, is in rebellion and 
combined in their throes they subject the poor victim 
to tortures horrible as those of the inquisition. Ulysses 
between Scylla and Charybdis was in transports of bliss 
compared to the man who is really and earnestly trying 
"to let it alone." It is during these sufferings of heart 



74 SUNSHINE. 

and brain and body that so many give the lie to their 
former belief and go back to their cups. It is only 
heroes who can suffer that win the battle. But, 
brothers, better a month of pain and anguish than a life 
of want and woe and an eternity of gloom and darkness. 
The struggle is severe, but possible. You can not drink 
or let it alone in the sense you claim power to do. It is 
not the mere work of "I will" or " I won't." It is not 
a work of moments. But courage and determination 
will win for you. God help you in the time of the 
conflict between appetite and manhood. 

Luther Benson, the erratic lecturer from Indiana, 
says that he never found but one man who really did 
let it alone right off. He went into a saloon, called for 
whisky, poured it out, and then found he had no money. 
The barkeeper would not trust him, and, as Luther says, 
"that young fellow actually did let it alone." It is 
easily inferred, however, that the next dime that came 
to hand was spent for drink. 

These men who can "let it alone" are moderate 
drinkers. They only drink when they want it. There 
comes a time when they want it oftener than they ought 
to have it. They "can drink and go about their 
business," and the time comes sooner or later when they 
have no business "to go about." These moderate 
drinkers are the support and prop of the liquor 
traffic to-day. It is they who, for the time being 
outwardly fair to view, prosperous in business and 



MODERATE DRINKING. 75 

socially esteemed, set the example of drinking to the 
young of the community. The boys have heard that 
strong drink makes ragged and poor, and bruises and 
beats, and they fail to see that Mr. A or Mr. B, the 
moderate drinker, is so suffering. The future, when 
these men may be so, has no force in their logic. The 
present is their logical ultimatum. Mr. A and Mr. B 
are well-dressed and prosperous ; friends of the mayor 
and clergyman, and they drink strong drink. This the 
boys know, for they see them coming out of the fashion- 
able club-house and saloon every day, smacking their 
lips, and complacently stroking their long vests imme- 
diately over their abdomen. They evidently feel good, 
and the boys, peeping, perhaps, through the green screen, 
have seen the cause of their self-satisfaction. They 
reason at once that strong drink has been maligned. It 
has not made these men drunken, ragged or poor. It 
seems rather to make thern happier, and the train is fired 
that leads, after a time, to the magazine of habit and 
appetite. Oh ! if these sharp-eyed boys could only wait 
or see ahead five or ten years, and see what wrecks these 
same men become, they would be saved. But forgetting 
the drunkard they saw last week in the gutter, they only 
remember the moderate drinker they saw to-day in his 
carriage. 

Remove every moderate drinker from our land, and 
the temperance question is solved. When the last 
drunkard dies or reforms, and the moderate drinker is 



76 SUNSHINE. 

no more, a drunkard will be a thing of the past. No 
boy, seeing a drunkard, wants to become one. Boys 
may read of pirates and Indian fighters, and aspire to 
such distinction, but they never aspire to the heights of 
drunkenness by reading of strong drink and its effects. 
They never pattern after the man in the gutter, but, see- 
ing the moderate drinker, as yet unscathed, they forget 
all else and desire to follow in his footsteps. Remove 
then, the moderate drinker, and your boys, having no 
pattern to follow, will grow up honorable, sober men. 

The writer has asserted time and time again on the 
platform that no drunkard ever made a drunkard, and 
that the moderate drinker has made them all. The 
assertion has never been disputed. 

The moderate drinker, according to his own story, 
only drinks for custom's sake. He does not like the 
drink itself. Acknowledge the truth of his statement. 
How easy would it be then for him to give it up, 
knowing it to "make his brother to offend?" His 
shoulders, he avers, are strong. Then it is his duty 
to bear the burden of his weaker brother. 

Were there only saloon-keepers and drunkards, out- 
raged humanity would quickly do away with both ; but 
the occasional drinker stands in between strong drink 
and temperance, and demands that the former shall be 
let alone. Church members, ministers, officials, wealthy 
citizens, not yet slaves, only on the road to slavery, 
assail the temperance " fanatics," and defend moderate 



MODERATE DKINKING. 77 

drinking. What can the temperance people do with 
these people arrayed against them ? They can save a 
drunkard and a boy occasionally, but they can not do 
away with the traffic that takes boys and makes of them 
drunkards. With the lever of love and charity on the 
fulcrum of prayer and faith in God, the temperance 
workers are trying to upset the saloon, but bracing it 
from the rear are the moderate, occasional, aristocratic 
drinkers, taking their drink on the sly and exerting all 
their force against the power of the lever in front. 
What can be done until the aristocrats of drink are 
converted ? 

Moderate drinker, these words are written in kindness 
to you. The writer knows that you are harming the 
community and are yourself on the road to ruin. Every 
drunkard was once a moderate drinker, believing in his 
own strength and safety as firmly as you do, yet he fell. 
A like fate may be yours. For the sake of the young 
of your community, for the sake of your own safety, 
hearken to our Macedonian cry and "come over and 
help us ! " Leave the Demon while yet you are strong, 
for thousands have died who have stood where you 
stand now. 

There will come a time when your occasional glass 
must be taken oftener; when it will be taken not for 
custom's sake or for the sake of good fellowship, but 
because you can not resist the demands of appetite, and 
in that hour it may be too late to make the change. 



78 SUXSHIXE. 

Moderate indulgence may be granted you for a time, but 
there will come an hour wheal immoderation begins, 
for, as Gough has said, "You can no more use strong 
drink a little at a time, and expect the appetite not to 
grow on you, than you can fire off a gun or a powder 
magazine a little at a time." Each day witnesses the 
forging of a link in the chain of your degradation and 
bondage. While yet the chain is unfinished there is 
hope of safety; when it is done, when link after link 
has been forged around you by the Demon of Drink, 
there is but the smallest ray of promise — but the 
smallest hope of your becoming again a free man. 

Come then, while it is yet day, while the sun of 
manhood is not overclouded by the gloom of drink. 
Remember the boy who looks to you for guidance, to 
be led into the right path. See that you pick out just 
such a path as God intended you should. Beware of 
standing at the base of life's mountain and with 
extended finger pointing to its crest, show your boy 
the path to glory. We have too many human guide- 
posts now that point the way but never go over it. 
The world needs guides, leaders, who spring ahead and 
break down all the briars and barriers on life's mountain* 
and themselves prepare the way for those in the rear. 
The moderate drinker does not say to his son that 
moderate drinking is the right road. He knows that 
total abstinence alone brings to the crest. Your boy, 
moderate drinking friend, learns more of his course in 



MODERATE DRINKING. 79 

life from your actions than your words. They appeal 
more strongly to his reason and he will, pattern his life 
after what you do, but little after what you say. Is 
it not your duty, then, to do the right? Then give up 
your occasional glass and mount with your boys hand 
in hand up "the evergreen mountains of life." 

Some years since a gentleman from the West visited 
a friend in the White Mountain region, remaining 
throughout the summer. Himself and host were in the 
habit of rising early in the mornings and ascending one 
of the mountains, aiming to go as far as possible to be 
back in time for the morning meal. Moreover, they 
did not use the tourist's beaten track, but each day, 
stimulated by the fresh air of the early dawn, they 
would push aside the briars and brambles and ascend by 
new and untried paths that they might see the 
awakening world beneath them from new points of 
observation. 

One morning the two friends, arising just as the 
wondrous painter, Day, was gilding the eastern heavens 
with flushes of color painter never yet reproduced, 
started up the mountain side and forgetting everything 
but the wondrous strength of the rarefied air of the 
new day, they toiled on higher and higher until they 
stood beyond the clouds floating lazily above a scarce- 
awakened w r orld. Just as they had pierced the clouds 
and stopped for a moment's rest, there came to their 
ears the shrill piping voice of a child, rising higher 



80 SUNSHLNE. 

and higher through the stratum of atmosphere, bearing 
a burden that could not be understood by the astonished 
listeners. Bending closer to the clouds and the valley 
beneath them, the two friends waited the repetition 
of the cry, which speedily came and was this time 
understood. It came from the five-year-old son 
of the host, whose little feet had w r andered from 
the home up the mountain after "papa," and the cry 
of the little voice was "Pick out the best path, papa; 
I'm coming too." 

You and I, brother mine, are climbing life's 
mountain, bound for the crest whereon success sits 
crowned in royal purple. We have been long journeying 
upward, trying to pierce the clouds of failure that we 
might bask in the sunlight nearer the heights. We have 
met the briars and brambles of temptation and sin, but, 
Oh, how often have w r e failed to "pick out the best path ;" 
failed to remember the little ones who were "coming 
too!" Brother, pierce through the bramble of drink 
now and on the other side of that bar to your ascent 
stand and pluck it out by the roots, tossing it into the 
chasms on either side, and thus remove so great a 
danger from the children who are following you up 
the mountain side. Let the path you choose for 
yourself be free from stones and ruts that your own 
journey may be the brighter and the safer, and that 
the little feet coming after may not be bruised and 
wounded and turned oil into one of the other paths 



MODERATE DRINKING. 81 

that only lead back to earth, and too often far beneath it 
into the world of the lost. 

This, moderate drinker, is a duty owed to God and 
man. Come from behind pillars of selfishness and 
become one of the workers for humanity. While yet you 
are free strike the blow that makes you ever free, and 
frees the little ones for time and eternity, by giving up, 
once and for all, the cup of the tempter. Then shall 
your ascent of life's golden hill be sweet and pleasant 
and when you reach the crest it will be to hear 
from the depths below the voices of the little toilers 
chanting their songs of praise and gratitude that 
their path has been made so easy by the one who 
went before. And on the heights, brother, you can 
stand and view that other land, the windows of which 
will be open for you, and when, laying on the crest 
of life's hill the rewards and glories of this life, 
you prepare to descend through the "valley of the 
shadow, your journey will be brightened by the 
company of the angels who, when the other side 
shall be reached, will spread wide their wings of love 
and bear you through the open window into the land 
where never yet has sin trod, and where all days shall 
be golden with the light coming from the Son of Man, 
from whose lips you shall hear "the conclusion of the 
whole matter" of life's journey — "Well done, good and 
faithful servant, enter thou into the joys of thy Lord !" 




CHAPTER VII. 

DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 

1 SK any reasoning man what is to-day the greatest 
curse of our land and he will answer — drunken- 
ness. There are, it is true, many evils rampant 
all over the nation, but none of them rival in extent 
of ruin the curse of drink, and a great percentage of 
these other evils is mainly due to the drink curse itself. 
Gambling, illicit sexuality, and blasphemy, everywhere 
prevalent, are but the children of Drink. Do away with 
the latter and we have pure men, pure women and pure 
children. There will be a proportion still tainted, but 
the mass of these evils will cease. Murder, assaults, 
robberies, forgeries, rapes, and the like, are fully eight- 
tenths caused by drunkenness. They are the outgrowths 
of a fast life superinduced by intoxicants. Men who 
drink are easily led into gambling and sexual excesses. 
They are expensive. Funds run short and Satan 
whispers "theft." The trusted clerk listens while his 
brain is crazed by drink and commits the crime. His 
friend, inflamed with wine, fancying an injury committed 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 83 

against him, demands blood. In a state of maudlin 
heroics he slays a brother man and sees the horror of the 
deed just too late. His crime is expiated on the 
scaffold, if the pardoning machine happens to be out of 
fix, or the poor culprit has no political influence, and 
two murders are committed by the demon of the glass. 
Drunkenness is the parent of eight-tenths of the crime 
and eight-tenths of the pauperism of our land. 

It is to-day wasting the brain and muscular labor of 
half a million drinkers — the waste to the nation is 
enormous in the loss of labor. Add, then, the expense 
to the country of the support of the drunken criminal 
and the drunken pauper and we see what a terrible 
thing this matter of strong drink has become. Yet, 
even in the face of all this, in the face of the murders, 
suicides, robberies and starvations of to-day, men believe 
the liquor traffic the financial salvation of the country. 
They either are too blind to see or will not see for 
selfish reasons. 

Take any community in our land ; go to ''the oldest 
citizen" and hear from his lips what strong drink has 
done round about him. Hear him tell of manhood high 
and noble wrecked on the sea of intemperance; of 
trusting hearts of women broken in twain; of golden- 
haired babies bruised and beaten and starved into early 
graves; of w r ealth and fame turned to poverty and 
disgrace; of homes once happy cursed by drink and 
made hells upon earth ; of all the crimes of the Decalogue 



84 SUNSHINE. 

committed under the influence of drink. Ask him to 
point to fame or wealth gained by drinking men. and 
his old head will shake and his tongue falter as he 
vainly tries to tell of one such man. Be led by him to 
the village cemetery, where under the sod and the dew 
are sleeping the many dead of the neighborhood; see 
grave after grave of men, women and children dug and 
filled by intemperance, and then after all these lessons 
on the curse of drink, remember that every community 
in our land is so cursed. 

Has strong drink any redeeming trait? Ask the 
trembling drunkard, as he steps blindly on toward the 
future : he will answer from the depths of a darkened 
soul — none. It never built up a nation, a city, a village, 
a home, or a man. It never did and never will do 
aught but blight and curse and ruin. It is a sirocco 
charged with poison ; a hurricane charged with hate. 
It carries neither health, wealth, fame, plenty nor 
sunshine in its train. Coming from Hell, it brings 
Hell's elements with it. 

Can, then, all these horrors be removed from our 
land? Is there any balm in Gilead? Yea, yea, a 
thousand times yea. Is God dead? Is God blind? 
Will He stand by forever while His children are afflicted 
with the plague? Not so. There is a cure for all 
moral and spiritual diseases. Intemperance can be cured. 
But how? 

By prayer, by sympathy, by personal effort, through 



DEUNKENNESS — THE CUESE AND THE CUEE. 85 

love and charity, by ballot, by song. Let us 
particularize. 

" Do you assert that prayer will remove the curse of 
intemperance?" asks a weak-kneed brother. Certainly. 
Let the temperance people of our land set an hour each 
day to unitedly bend the knee and pray God for the 
doing away of the scourge, and such a tidal wave of 
strength would go up all over our land as would make 
the saloon-keeper and the manufacturer tremble in their 
strong places. Prayer has been an antidote for sin 
since chaos was ruled away to make room for worlds and 
souls and hearts. 

"But," says this weak-kneed brother, whose prayers, 
perhaps, are over-ballasted with self and consequently 
never rise beyond the ceiling of his closet, "Has not 
the Christian world been praying for years, and has the 
curse been even stayed ? 

True, brother, but prayer is something so easily 
misunderstood by those who offer it that perhaps the 
trouble lies there. It is not everyone who has cried, 
Lord! Lord! who is destined for the Kingdom, neither 
is every petition sent to God destined for His ear„ 

An emigrant with a large family was on a western- 
bound train en route for a home in Kansas. A pick- 
pocket stole all his money. A kind-hearted man on 
board, learning the facts, raised a collection to help the 
travelers on their way. Nearly all on the train 
contributed. In the parlor car sat a portly man., 



86 SUNSHINE. 

evidently well-to-do, reading a religious paper. The 
collector thought he was good for a ten-dollar note, at 
least. He told him the story while he held by the hand 
two of the emigrant's children, weeping convulsively. 
"Poor things ! " said the long-faced hypocrite. "A sad 
story. But it may not be true. It is not best to give 
promiscuously. It encourages idleness. Pll give a 
prayer to the Lord for their help." And the sanctimoni- 
ous, purse-proud, rubber-faced (so-called) Christian shut 
his eyes and offered a silent prayer for the suffering 
family. Every ventilator and window in the car were 
open, but that prayer never got as high as the telegraph 
wires along the track. Prayer in that instance meant 
dollars. It does in many other cases, likewise. 

God has been asked for a century to remove intemper- 
ance. He does not propose doing it all Himself. 
Christ might have rolled away the stone covering the 
tomb of Lazarus, but as it was something the friends of the 
dead could easily do, he let them do it while he attended 
to calling Lazarus back to life, something his friends 
could not do. We have asked God for years to lift up 
our loved ones dead in sin to the new life of manhood 
and sunshine, but as we have refused to roll away the 
stone above their resting place, God has been silent. 
"Roll ye away the stone" is meant for us to-day as well 
as for Martha and Mary and their weeping friends 
hundreds of years ago. 

The old darkey has explained it in his own way: 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 87 

"Just arter de war, when times was hard and pro- 
visions mighty skeerce, I used to pray de Lord to send 
one o' Massa Peyton's turkeys for de ole darkey. But 
de turkey nebber come. Den I prayed de Lord to send 
de ole darkey arter one o' Massa Peyton's turkeys, and 
de matter was generally 'tended to befo' sun-up de next 
rnawninV 

We can answer many of our prayers ourselves, but it 
seems that it will be long ere this is generally learned* 
All over our land we find men praying each morning, 
"Give us this day our daily bread," and then they go 
and sit down on a curbstone, salt barrel or dry goods 
box and wait for the Lord to throw the bread at them. 
The Lord is not running a bakery. He provides the 
tiny seed, the fallow ground, the atmosphere, the dews, 
and the rain. He asks us to take the seed, place it in 
the bosom of the earth, cover it over, remove the weeds, 
and then He, with the air, the dew and the rain, will 
give us back a harvest an hundred and a thousand fold. 
We are to tickle the earth and He is to cause it to laugh 
back with a harvest, as an old poet has it ; we are then 
to take the ripened grain, cut it down, thresh it, grind 
it, bring it home, give it to the other half, and she, 
sifting it well, puts in a little salt and yeast and water, 
mixes well, sets behind the stove to raise, to find it in 
the morning running all over the kitchen, like a country 
girl with a new dress. Then she kneads it a little 
more, shapes it into loaves, places it in the oven and in 



88 # SUNSHINE. 

thirty minutes you have your bread. God has done a 
thousand fold more than you have, yet you have done 
your share, and your prayer for bread is answered. 

This is the way we should pray for the removal of the 
curse of intemperance: doing everything possible for 
human nature to accomplish and then ask God to bless 
our efforts and carry them to a harvest. Prayer is not 
a matter of words alone. There is more real prayer in 
an honest effort to remove an evil than in all the words 
of the centuries. God does not bless an end but the 
means towards an end. It is our duty to first attempt 
to remove intemperance and then pray God to bless the 
attempt. In this way God and man, through prayer, 
accomplish wonders. Man is weakness— God is strength- 
God and one man can overthrow a world. Samson, 
giant as he was, could not have removed the gates of 
Gaza, but lifting up his sightless eyes, after putting all 
his strength to the task, he asked God to shoulder 
the rest of the burden and the end desired was 
achieved. 

There are church members who wonder why God has 
not answered their prayers and removed intemperance 
from the land, while all the time they have been praying 
they have been hindering God's work and strengthening 
the hold of the traffic upon the nation. For three 
hundred and sixty-four days they have prayed to God; 
told him all the horrors of drink and asked that they be 
forever done away with, and yet on the three hundred 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 89 

and sixty-fifth day they have gone to the polls, their 
breasts swelled out with the dignity of American 
citizenship, and voted a straight party ticket, half the 
names on which w r ere the names of drinking men and 
supporters of the traffic, if not dealers in the curse 
themselves. Tell them that such a vote but keeps God 
from answering their prayers and they aver that "party 
ties must not be loosed or the country is doomed, sir." 
God and temperance must take back seats, political ties 
being dearer than all else. 

Let these men but answer their own prayers by 
refusing to vote into office any man who is not a moral, 
honest, temperance man and a sworn enemy to strong 
drink, and they will find their prayers answered from 
on high in quick order. There is enough strength in the 
Christian churches in our land to-day to overthrow 
intemperance in twelve months, if that strength could be 
but centered at the ballot-box, Not centered upon 
prohibition tickets, w r e do not mean, but centered upon 
temperance men, democrats or republicans, grangers, 
independents, greenbackers, nationals, saints or sinners, 
Episcopalians or Old School Baptists. Let the Christian 
voter scratch his ticket, whatever may be its political 
complexion, wherever there is a whisky man on it, and 
substitute for that man a man from one of the other 
tickets in the field who is a temperance man, and thus by 
combining works with words in his prayer for the safety 
of his land, he will speedily find that God, having found 



90 SUNSHINE. 

the stones of slavery to party ties rolled from the grave 
of the dead in sin, will enter the tomb and bring the 
loved one back to the new life. The time has come 
when party ties must be forgotten in our devotion to 
humanity and God. 

Let us resolve that hereafter the while we pray we 
will work as well and then wait God's good time for 
the removal of the curse. There are men who pray 
constantly for this glorious consummation, but only 
with their lips. They never give a dollar to help along 
temperance work; they never attend the meetings and 
come out openly on the Lord's side; they will not sign 
the pledge because they never drank and don't need to; 
they will not help the young man, trying to struggle 
upward from the slough of drink, with work or loans, 
when actually needed, their one only weapon against a 
curse so strongly fortified being prayer — words — wind. 
Such prayer the writer does not believe in. True 
Christians don't believe in it. God will not accept it. 
Unless we pray with lips and heart and head and soul 
and pocket and muscle, we don't pray at all. Real 
prayer is our greatest help in fighting our enemy ; mock 
prayer our greatest hindrance. Let our prayers here- 
after be made up of words and acts conjointly and we 
will not long wait for their answer. 

Personal effort is a sure means of success in saving men. 
By personal effort we mean personal work- — not the 
mere offering of influence of names to the pledge paper. 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE 91 

It is not enough that temperance people should sit in the 
synagogue where they may be seen of men ; they must 
be up and doing by night and by day, in season and out 
of season, on the street and in the squalid homes, as well 
as in the hall or church during a meeting. It is not 
enough that they should enroll themselves on the side 
of right; they must roll up their sleeves, put their 
shoulders to the wheel and prove their right to be so 
enrolled. It is the man who is always loaded clear to 
the teeth with kind words and ready sympathy and who 
works outside of the meeting harder than inside of«it, 
who does the most good. 

The writer has been engaged in the temperance 
reform as a lecturer and worker for two years and a 
half. Under God he has added tens of thousands of 
names to the pledge of total abstinence. They have 
not been gained by lecturing, but by hand-to-hand, 
heart-to-heart work, by sympathy and kindness and 
good will to all men. This is the work that tells. 
Personal effort means hunting work for the reclaimed, 
visiting his home with words of cheer, and if necessary 
baskets of other "cheer." It means opening the door 
of your heart and the door of your home to the man 
seeking the heights. Let each temperance man and 
women get off their "downy beds of ease" and go into 
this personal conflict with drink, carrying and offering 
the pledge wheresoever they may be and victory will 
only come the sooner. 



92 SUNSHINE. 

Charity is a wondrous help in this work. Not alone 
is meant the charity which prompts a good man to 
contribute money to carry on meetings, but the charity 
which prompts the man to help the poor fellow who has 
lost work and become impoverished through his 
drunkenness. Work must be provided for such a man to 
keep his mind occupied. Let him sign the pledge 
with no work and an empty cupboard and four or five 
empty stomachs at home, and if the latter state of affairs 
be not changed, the mind, already disturbed by cessation 
from drink, will become well-nigh crazed, and the 
first offered glass of drink will be taken as a means of 
forgetting the other suffering ones at home. The 
writer is not a believer in Christians who are converted 
only as to heart. He worships the memory of the old 
woman who gave half her yearly revenue in charity, and 
who, when taken to task for her great liberality, 
replied : 

"Bless the Lord ! When He converted my heart He 
converted my pocket with it." 

A few more such thorough conversions would work 
wonders for the church of Christ and the temperance 
work. 

We have heard of a good deacon who rose in 
"speaking meeting" and spoke of the blessings of a free 
gospel. 

"Praise the Lord " cried out the false pretender, "for 
this free gospel ! I've been a member of this church 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 93 

nigh onto twenty-five years and it hasn't cost me twenty- 
five cents." 

"May the Lord bless your stingy soul ! " was all the 
minister said, but it was enough. 

Such men as this one are plenty and they are dead 
wood to churches and to reforms. The men who carry on 
the work of the Lord are open-hearted and free-handed, 
feeling themselves but stewards of God's boundless 
wealth. They know they can not take their money with 
them when they die and so they make it pave their 
pathway to the other world while yet they live. The 
other class hang on to their dollars as if they expected to 
carry them across Jordan. When they get a silver 
piece they drop it down into their pockets with a 
malicious grin of satisfaction, and as it disappears from 
sight you can hear the eagle on the off side of the coin 
(a very sharp judge of character this bird is, to be sure,) 
singing, "Farewell, vain world! I'm gone for good." 
Such men give their children a penny to go to bed 
without any supper and charge them a cent for 
breakfast. One of them, scolded by his neighbors for 
starving his horse, which ought to have carried on its 
side habitually a placard reading, "Corn wanted — 
Enquire within/' took the poor beast to the stable one 
evening after a hard day's work and throwing two 
nubbins of corn and a dozen straws of hay in the bin, 
said feelingly: "There, now, eat till you bust. The 
neighbors shan't scold me no more." 



94 SUNSHINE. 

Poor devils! They should not fret and worry and 
fuss and screw to save money. They can not take it with 
them when they die. It would melt if they could. The 
souls of such men put; on glass and magnified would be a 
rare sight, but none will ever see such an one until a 
kind Providence allows man to invent a more powerful 
magnifying microscope than ingenuity has ever yet 
devised. A thousand such souls cou'd dance a cotillion 
on the point of a needle and then freeze to death because 
of to much room and air. 

These men (now, reader, don't imagine that the 
writer thinks that any of them live in your neighbor- 
hood,) can never be looked to to help the cause of 
temperance. They are temperance men, it is true, but 
it is only because whisky costs money that they are such. 
They are dead weights to any community and nobody 
likes them. Yet somehow or other they live to a good 
old age and die, if the county paper is to be believed, 
"universally respected and regretted," and their tomb- 
stones are sure to have some highly complimentary 
testimonials on them. "What liars these tombstones 
be!" altering Shakespeare to fit the case in hand. If 
half the men buried in some cemeteries (not the one in 
your vicinity, kind reader,) could just get out of their 
graves and read the inscription on there tombstone?, they 
would imagine they had got in the wrong hole. 

But thank God, such men do not make up the sum 
total of manhood ! There are men in every community 



DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE 95 

whose heart and pocket are so closely united that the one 
never opens to the cry of distress that the other does not 
follow. Reformed men must be fed, clothed and given 
work. These things must come from the charity of the 
workers in the great cause of man's redemption from 
the thralldom of drink. 

Then, again, there is a charity that costs nothing. 
There are people all over our land starving to-day, yet 
surrounded with plenty. They are starving for love, 
companionship, kind words and open hearts. These 
must be offered, O charitable laborers for God and man, 
if your work is to be complete. Love and sympathy, 
flowing from charitable hearts, cost nothing, but surely 
never was speculation so profitable made with so little 
investment, Let the hearts of the workers be ever open, 
ready to receive every passer-by, and thus with prayer, 
charity and love and sympathy, the good work will roll 
on toward its final consummation. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DRUNKENNESS — THE CURSE AND THE CURE. 
CONTINUED. 

(&TN the previous chapter the writer spoke of work at 
^A the ballot-box. A few more thoughts on this 
^^ subject will not be out of place. The author is not 
a prohibitionist in the general acceptance of the term. 
In the absence of temperance men on any other political 
ticket he would vote a prohibition ticket. He is a 
prohibitionist for the future and will devote every effort 
of his life to the prohibition of the drink traffic. He 
believes, however, in a half loaf in the absence of no 
bread. He believes that local option (the half loaf) can 
be obtained within a year or two in each State, whereas, 
should every effort tend only to prohibition, it will at 
least be many years ere a single State could win it. Let 
the temperance and Christian people of each State 
demand local option laws, just as Ohio and Indiana did 
in 1878. Let the House of Representatives and Senate 
be flooded with petitions. Then if, as before, these 
petitions be disregarded, the work must begin elsewhere, 



THE CURSE AND THE CURE.— CONTINUED. 97 

It is a well-known fact that the better class of citizens 
of a community rarely bestir themselves in primary and 
ward meetings, caucuses and the like of their respective 
parties. They may attend the greater conventions and 
cast their votes on the day of the elections, but the 
preliminary meetings are left in the hands of professional 
politicians, wire-pullers and ward bummers. These men 
manipulate the entire State while good citizens sit idly 
by and wonder why there is so much rascality "in office/' 
Here, then, is the work to be begun when petitions have 
failed. Let the good citizen attend all preliminary 
political meetings, and especially meetings where 
delegates to county and state conventions are selected. 
Let his voice be heard above that of the wire-puller and 
the professional politician. No matter how much the 
opposition wants Patsy Burns or Jacob Schlossheimer, 
saloon-keepers, to represent them as delegates, let the 
good citizen keep his head and offer some one from his 
own ranks as a delegate. Let other good citizens be on 
hand to have a voice in the matter. Let the question be 
put intelligently and the vote carefully attended to. Let 
the lower classes see that there are others who are 
attending to these matters as well as themselves, and 
after a short time a better class of delegates will be sent 
to nominating conventions where state representatives 
and senators are to be selected for the suffrages of the 
people. After the good citizen has thus controlled the 
primaries, caucuses, or whatever they may be called. 



98 SUNSHINE. 

and gotten the delegates of his choice, let him see that 
these delegates carry to their conventions the name of a 
man who will adorn the office to be filled, a man who is 
a foe to wrong and a friend to right, whose vote will 
ever be on the side of temperance and God. Had Ohio, 
in 1878, had but three more such representatives, the 
local option bill would have been carried and strong 
drink driven out of one-half the counties of the 
State. 

When this temperance man shall be nominated the 
good citizen must for the nonce be one of the noble 
army of "ticket-holders" at the polls. He must 
button-hole voters, take them a half-square off, and with 
bated breath and sparkling eyes tell of the battle to be 
fought that day — right against wrong, virtue against vice, 
temperance against strong drink. He must do all this 
as earnestly and determinedly as the veriest ward 
bummer of them all. The result will be the election 
of a temperance man, and just such work should be done 
by the friends of temperance in every election, township, 
city, county and State. The election of county com- 
missioners has much to do with the reign of strong 
drink in the county, just as the election of mayor and 
councilmen means free rum or temperance. The senator 
from your district and the representative from your 
county may hold the balance of power when again the 
local option bill comes up. It can thus easily be seen 
wherein our temperance workers are inactive. 



THE CURSE AND THE CURE. — CONTINUED. 99 

The whisky element is always at work during a 
campaign. It spends more money during an election 
for county commissioners or city councilmen than during 
an election for president. It knows "which side its 
bread is buttered on." On that side it will be found 
with plenty of time and money and men, filling 
caucuses and conventions, holding tickets at the polls, 
button-holing voters, and using all the other arts and 
wiles of the shrewd political intriguant. From these 
things temperance people must take a lesson. The 
whisky element now virtually controls many cities and 
counties; yes, and States too. It is the fault of the 
temperance man who thought plenty of prayers and 
plenty of temperance meetings all that was needed. 
The temperance element must make "the powers that 
be" afraid of its strength as the whisky element has 
already done. 

In the year of 1878 the Indiana Senate and House set 
apart a committee to receive a deputation of temperance 
people, who bore to their senators and representatives 
petitions with thousands of signatures, asking for a local 
option bill to be passed. While the committee was 
receiving the delegation and listening to the appeals of 
thousands of heart-broken wives and starving children, 
through the delegation, the chairman of the State Saloon' 
keepers' Protective Association, known, the writer 
believes, as the "Association of Law and Liberty," 
obtruded himself into the committee room and told the 



100 SUNSHLNE. 

senators and representatives in the hearing of the 
temperance delegation, that he represented fifteen 
thousand voters of the State of Indiana, and if the 
petition of those temperance fanatics were favorably 
answered, every voter would go over to the opposite 
party, which had been defeated the year before in the 
State contest. Fifteen thousand votes were too many 
to be lost, and the committee went back to their 
respective houses and forgot (?) to say a word about the 
local option bill and the fifty thousand signers to 
petitions for its passage. Of course the party dominant 
knew that hundreds, perhaps thousands, would die 
of delirium tremens the next year; murder, suicide, rape, 
robbery, and ruin would stain the State with blood and 
sorrow; hundreds of happy hearts would be broken, and 
bright homes made dark, but these things could only 
be remedied by the loss to their pet party of fifteen 
thousand votes, and they preferred the votes to the 
saved souls, the happy hearts and the sunshiny homes. 

When the temperance people make their voices to be 
heard above the clamor of wire-pullers and dishonest 
politicians, then will law and right begin to assert their 
sway and the cause of God and humanity flourish as a 
green bay tree. The temperance element must unite, and 
refuse help to political parties that will not consent to be 
purified for the good of the State; it must demand 
recognition on township, city, county and state ticket or 
threaten a united action upon a third party ticket, and in 



THE CURSE AND THE CURE. — CONTINUED. 1()1 

this way local option may be brought about to the State, 
and a closed or restricted traffic in intoxicants in city and 
county. 

Local option once gained the way is open for 
prohibition. The former has been and is a success 
wherever introduced. Let but all the people see its 
beneficent results, and even politicians of the most ultra 
school will favor total prohibition. The thoughts of 
this chapter are respectfully submitted to the temperance 
people as a means toward the cure of the national 
disease — drunkenness. Let the suggestions be carried 
out, the temperance people be such in every word, 
thought and act, and the time will come when one or the 
other of the great political parties w T ill adopt temperance 
as a campaign key-note, promise us a local option 
plank in their platform, and win the day. It w r ill be 
won without the third party of the prohibitionists, and 
w 7 ill result in prohibition sooner than they can bring it 
about themselves. Let them aid us toward our half 
lo^f. We will then, with local option as a success to use 
as illustrations, bring prohibition as our next step 
upward. 

The writer has spoken of different remedies to be 
used together to cure drunkenness. They apply 
generally to the rescue work of our calling. Individual 
cases require different means. One man would resent 
sympathy and proffers of help; another would demand 
them. One man must not be told he is a drunkard; his 



102 SUNSHINE. 

hobby of self-strength, must be respected, though all the 
world may see it is past use. Calling upon a known 
drunkard, to endeavor to get his consent to become a 
member of the Temple of Honor, the writer was told by 
the man (who was a practicing physician) that he was 
never under the influence of drink in his life. "I would 
like to join your noble order, not for myself, for I do 
not need your help, but for the sake of the influence I 
might have in inducing those who do need it to join." 

The writer knew his man and insisted upon his 
joining the order that he might save others, dropping 
entirely his own case, and yet the same morning, when 
he called at the doctor's residence to see him on the 
same matter, the doctor was in bed dead drunk, while his 
wife, with the tears coursing down her cheeks, told the 
story of his brutality to her while drunk (and for years 
he had never drawn a sober breath) and, baring her 
arms, showed wounds and bruises inflicted by her 
husband within the previous forty-eight hours. Yet, to 
hear him talk, he had never been drunk in his 
life. 

So it will be seen that some men must be let alone in « 
so far as they are concerned themselves, and the shrewd 
worker will endeavor to enlist them for their influence 
to the cause. One man must be asked to sign the pledge 
for the sake of his wife; another, whose wife is perhaps a 
termagant and indirectly the cause of her husband's 
drinking, must be appealed to in the name of his 



THE CURSE AKP THE CURE. — CONTINUED. 10?> 

children. One man prides himself on his good looks: 
tell him how rum ruins the features. Strike another in 
the pocket. Stingy men — men who always drink alone 
and never "set 'em up," must be struck there. Tell 
them what it costs them each year. Tell another how 
he risks promotion. Find out each man's soft spot and 
right there gently press. 

Many are the temperance people who are willing to 
work in meetings, but outside of them have nothing to 
say. They are not exactly "good Lord, good Devil" 
folks, but they are nearly related to those who are. 
There is no place where the duty of the temperance 
worker does not call him or her. While traveling one 
has many chances to save fallen humanity or keep the 
young from falling. (And whatever others may say, the 
writer is of the belief that, though it is a grand thing to 
save a drunkard, it is far grander to keep a boy from 
ever becoming a drunkard.) 

Some time in the summer of 1879 the writer started 
to the State Convention of the Ohio branch of the 
National Christian Temperance Union. At Dayton he 
was joined by the lamented Dan Rouzer and J. St. J, 
Clarkson, reformed men, the former editor of The Life 
Boat, a most excellent temperance journal, and the latter 
editor and proprietor of The Saturday People, a paper 
ably advocating greenbacks, the rights of the laborer, 
and temperance. These men were likewise temperance 
lecturers and workers. The party left Dayton at mid- 



104 SUNSHINE. 

night. As they were stopping at "the hoist/' where the 
trucks of the cars were changed from the narrow to the 
broad gauge, the writer was approached by a well- 
dressed, gentlemanly young man from the opposite 
side of the car, who asked a light for his cigar. 
The small favor was granted with a cheery greeting 
and an invitation to sit down in the double seat occupied 
by the three temperance w r orkers. This accepted, the 
party speedily became interested in conversation, 
interspersed with stories and anecdotes, which was 
interrupted, after a time, by the young man asking 
to be excused while he returned to his former seat. 
Coming back in a moment and remarking, "It's all 
I have left, but you're welcome to what there 
is of it," the young man handed "a pocket pistol" — /. e. 
whisky flask, to the writer, adding to his former 
remarks : 

"Take some^and pass it around." 

Three temperance lecturers were on their feet in an 
instant, and while smiles chased each other over 
their features, the index fingers of three right hands 
pointed proudly to as many ribbons of blue as the 
writer remarked : 

"Excuse us, friend, but we happen to be three 
temperance lecturers on our way to a temperance 
convention at Akron, and we never drink." The face 
of the stranger lengthened out at a rate somewhat less 
than a mile a minute. 



THE CURSE AND THE CUKE. — CONTINUED. 105 

"Well ! " he remarked, "that beats me." 

"What?" we asked. 

"Why, that you men don't drink. Why, strangers, 
you're the j oiliest men I ever met, and I never before 
met men who were so full of fun who didn't drink," 
was the reply of the gentleman. 

That settled his case. We took charge of him one by 
one, then collectively, and talked more temperance into 
him in three hours than he had heard in a lifetime. 
We told him that we were the men who had a right to 
be jolly and full of fun, because with past lives full 
of gloom and want and sorrow and shame, we were 
enjoying lives in a present of sunshine, happiness and 
plenty. One by one we related the story of our lives, 
bringing tears time and time again to the young man's 
eyes, and after he had listened for three hours to our 
stories we kindly allowed him to go to sleep, although 
we did intend to get him to sign the pledge or else talk 
him to death and save him in that way for his mistake 
of offering us strong drink. We thought better of it, 
however, and allowed him to get much needed rest. 
But scarcely was the day discerned, rising above the 
eastern heights, than we again opened the attack. We 
found the young man sobered and thoughtful, and after a 
few moments' conversation — after we had told him of 
our work, opened our hearts and made a brother of him, 
the car window was thrown up, the bottle (just as 
handed to us at first) was thrown outside the car, the 



106 SUNSHINE. 

blue ribbon was pinned on the young man's coat, and it 
seemed to the three workers that just at that moment 
God opened the throats of all His songsters in the woods 
through which we were going to raise a song of triumph 
for a soul saved. That brother was saved at the rate 
of forty miles an hour, and the story is here told to show 
how the work may everywhere be carried on suc- 
cessfully. Poor Dan-Rouzer! The act of that night 
pleaded for him when his soul stood beside the bar of 
God for judgment 




CHAPTER IX. 

LOCAL OPTION. 

fHE work of the temperance reformer is not 
ended when the drinking man has signed the 
total abstinence pledge. That step taken by the 
poor inebriate, he is nearer safety than ever before, but 
80 long as that man lives so long will he have to 
combat an appetite for drink, and with a grog shop on 
every corner the battle will be a long and terrible one, 
and many will be vanquished by their old enemy. 
Hosv, then, are we to make our converts safe for all 
time? Surely not by sending them out upon the streets 
with the pledge in their pockets, to run the gauntlet of a 
half hundred saloons. They are in danger just as long 
as the gauntlet exists to be run. To remove the danger 
remove the gauntlet — there rests the secret of the safety 
of our pledge signers. "But how will we go about it?" 
asks Mr. Doubter; "surely prohibition will not come at 
our call." 

Prohibition is not our key-note at present; local 
option is. With a local option law, vouchsafed by our 



108 SUNSHINE. 

law-makers, we will remove two-thirds of the gauntlets, 
now being run by men trying to reform, in one year 
from the date of the passage of the law. In five years 
thereafter the State will be a prohibition State, if the 
local optionists lay not down their weapons when the 
law is granted. Local option means prohibition to the 
county, town or township that wants prohibition. In 
1872 Pennsylvania had a local option law; it at once 
made prohibition counties out of forty-one of the sixty- 
six counties in that State. The sale of liquor was 
reduced one-half, and the wholesalers and manufacturers 
were growing wild. Thousands of dollars were raised 
as a campaign fund, and petitions sent to the Legislature 
praying that the law be repealed, as it was ruining the 
great liquor traffic of the State. Brave was the fight 
of the temperance people against the repeal, but dollars 
and "business prosperity" prevailed. The interest of 
the liquor traffic outweighed the worth of souls and 
hearts and sunshiny homes in the minds of the 
legislators, and the local option law was repealed. 

Were local option not a success, would the liquor 
dealers and makers of the Keystone State have worked 
so hard against it? Local option has been a success 
wherever tried, and it is the one way to save our 
friends who sign the pledge and "our boys" who are 
"coming on." 

Every county or community that has been given local 
option, and by it voted down the sale of strong jdrink, 



LOCAL OPTION. 109 

has gained in reduction of taxes, poor expenses and 
police fund, thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the 
higher gains of sobriety, morality and advanced religious 
sentiment. A county in Missouri (name forgotten), that 
voted liquor out of its confines some years since, levied 
last year a property tax of nine mills. Compare that 
sum with your own property levy and see whether the 
residents of said county made anything by local 
option. 

"Is prohibition through local option laws consti- 
tutional?" asks another. 

The supreme court of Pennsylvania was asked that 
question by the liquor magnates in 1872 and decided the 
local option law constitutional. It is a legal right as 
old as the first lawgiver that the people may prohibit 
any business that is detrimental to the interests of the 
community where it is carried on. "Salus populi 
suprema est lex" — the welfare of the people is the 
supreme law — is a legal maxim that neither wire pulling, 
lobbying nor dollars have ever yet thrown over, while that 
other long-established maxim of law supports it — "Sic 
titer e tuo ut alienum non loedas" — enjoy your own 
property in such a manner as not to injure that of 
another. 

Upon principles like these the laws of all civilized 
nations are founded — laws limiting and regulating the 
business of said nations, and both of the above principles 
of law support the constitutionality of local option. 



HO SUNSHINE. 

There is no question of the legality of a law which 
prohibits the building of a powder manufactory on the 
business square of a city. There is danger to the 
acjoining property, and hence no man dares to erect a 
building for such a purpose at such a point. Neither 
may a slaughter-house go up next to the postoffice, or 
a dynamite factory alongside the church. So, likewise, 
the people have passed laws, unquestioned as to legality, 
concerning the circulation of impure literature, the sale 
of lottery tickets and concerning gambling, believing 
such things to be detrimental to the welfare of the 
people. 

If these laws, then, be constitutional, and for the 
reasons asserted, it is only necessary to prove that the 
manufacture and sale of strong drink is injurious to the 
people of any community to prove that the prohibition 
of such manufacture and sale can legally be made. Is 
there a necessity for such proof being brought forward? 
Surely that man lying in yonder gutter, that other going 
down the walk between two policemen, that funeral 
cortege bearing the body of a dead drunkard to the 
grave, that woman with two pale-faced children clinging 
to her gown, begging bread of the passers-by, each and 
all victims of the cursed drink traffic, are all the proof 
that is needed for the indictment of the maker and 
seller of strong drink. Surely the history of a Bobby 
Burns, a Daniel Webster, an Edgar Poe, and a Stephen 
A. Douglas, are strong enough proofs that strong drink 



LOCAL OPTION. Ill 

is a curse to any community. Are more needed? Then 
go back to the day, several years ago, when a bright- 
eyed boy, not yet twenty years of age, Harry Murphy 
by name, was executed in the jail corridor at Dayton, 
Ohio, for a murder committed when drunk — hear him as 
he stood before the eyes of the small audience, with the 
rope dangling above his fair face, say, "whisky and bad 
company brought me here," and then ask for more 
proofs of rum's iniquitous doings if you dare. 

The writer, however, knows that his readers are men 
and women of sense. He feels that there is no necessity 
on his part of adding proof to proof of why strong drink 
should be buried under an avalanche of local option 
prohibition, and so he turns willingly to the means for 
bringing about the "consummation so devoutly to be 
wished." 

In the first place wake up the people of your vicinity 
to the great need of the hour. Follow out the plans 
of the two great political parties, and appoint open air 
and hall meetings throughout your county, to be 
addressed by local or foreign speakers on the subject of 
local option, and the duty of each friend of humanity in 
the premises. Have discussions on the subject in your 
regular temperance meetings. While you are waking 
up your county, see that the neighboring counties are 
waked up likewise. If there are none over the line to 
do it, leave your county in good hands and cross the 
line yourself. Commence at the start to get signers to a 



112 SUNSHINE. 

petition for the passage of a local option law to be sent 
to the Legislature. Get every name in the county that 
can be gotten. Slight, no one. Carry it with you 
constantly. Get the minister to read the petition and 
lay it on the altar rail after service Sabbath morning. 
Get the manufacturers in your town to sign it and give 
you the privilege of offering it to their employes. Let 
the petition state the business of each signer. 

But while this is being done, there is something else 
still more important — the election of the right kind of 
a man to the Legislature and State Senate. The 
primaries are to be attended, different influences set to 
work and a temperance man elected, whether he belongs 
to your political party or not. This has been explained 
in another chapter of this book. Other means of work 
are given below in the words of Rev. S. M. Vernon, 
D. D., of Pennsylvania: 

"1. Scatter temperance literature. The overwhelming 
facts and statistics of the temperance cause, which can not 
be detailed in this paper, ought to be forced upon the 
attention of the public. Temperance tracts, papers and 
3ooks must be freely distributed, that the people 
«i*ay be informed and aroused. Men of means must 
give money, men of intelligence must write, men of 
executive ability must organize and project, and 
Christian men must pray for the cause. We dare 
not overlook the established methods of success, if we 
mean not ignominiously to fail. Knowledge is the 



LOCAL, OPTION. 113 

basis of action, and, if Ave wisn to control the action 
of the people, we must furnish them the knowledge at 
our disposal. 

"2. Organize. Our movements are uncertain, unless 
conducted by organized bodies. Every county should 
have its local option organization, and be in regular 
correspondence with the general or State organization, 
that all our movements may be in harmony and 
that one may help the other. Unorganized sentiment is 
as powerless as an unorganized army, and will accomplish 
nothing. The evil we oppose has a vast, compact, 
wealthy organization, that can throw its whole force 
in the state upon any given point on a week's notice. 
We may not hope to equal our foe in wealth and 
organization; but let not our David go forth to 
meet this Goliath unless he has his carefully-selected 
stones and well-prepared sling. Then, if he trusts in 
the God of battles, he shall succeed. 

"3. We must use political influence. It is useless 
to pray and speak, if we are not willing to vote 
for the cause of temperance. There is temperance 
sentiment enough in the country to control the 
nominations, if it will go to the primaries; and enough 
to control the elections, if it will go to the polls. Let 
every voter watch the primaries, question the candidates 
of his party, and vote only for those who, in the 
legislature, will vote for the highest interests of the 
people. The temperance sentiment of the country can 



114 SUNSHINE. 

control this matter , if it will, and is, therefore, particeps 
criminis if it does not." 

With all these means of work the first year's labor 
may be unsuccessful. Work on, work harder than 
ever. If local option is worth having it is worth a 
dozen defeats, but if the Christian temperance people 
will forget party, hearken to the cry of the drunkard and 
his family, gird up their loins for the battle, and 
determine to win, our own State and every other State 
can have a local option law inside of three years at the 
farthest, and local option once obtained and the benefits 
of "no liquor" fully proved, prohibition complete is only 
one step farther on. 

Mem. — In the previous chapter headed "Alcohol — The Curse and 
the Cure," further suggestions as to bringing about local option will 
t>e found. 




CHAPTER X. 

THE CURE. — THE ONE MAN POWER. 

' SK personal effort from many men and women in 
the temperance reform and they at once bring to 
bear against you an hundred and one reasons 
why their efforts will result in nothing. They are not 
acquainted, they are not good talkers, they dont raov e 
in the society of the men to be saved, and for one reason 
or another they have no influence. As an old county 
farmer said : 

" Wall ! temperance is a good thing. I'm in favor of 
it, but you see I can't do you no good nor get no signers, 
nohow. I never had no eddication and I can't talk to 
'em, and consequently I hain't got no influence." 

The writer is not a believer in "no influence" men. 
He don't believe God ever created a man or a woman 
without some influence for good. It may never have 
amounted to anything, from want of use, but it k 
centered in the man or woman for all that. But these 
men claim to possess none whatever, and many workers 
have let them alone on that ground. Were some one 



116 SUNSHISTE. 

else to tell them that they possessed no influence for 
good, they would resent it at once. The writer, when 
met by this cry, invariably tells them to commit suicide 
and get out of the road of better people who are good for 
something. This "riles" them on the start, but wakes 
them up. In answering such objections to personal 
labor from the platform he tells the "Indian story," 
somewhat as follows : 

"If there is really any one on God's fair earth who 
imagines he has no influence, he ought to die. (The 
reader will please understand that the object is to 
shame them out of their lethargy.) Why, up in 
Hamilton, next door to the postoffice, there's a wooden 
Indian with three wooden feathers in his hat, a wooden 
head, a wooden trunk, wooden limbs, and a wooden 
tomahawk in one hand and a wooden bunch of cigars in 
the other. The proprietor of the cigar store thinks so 
much of this wooden Indian that he takes him in at 
night and lets him out in the morning, and gives him 
three new suits of paint every year. And the reason for 
all this attention is that that wooden Indian has 
influence enough to draw the passer-by inside the store 
to buy cigars and tobacco, and if I didn't have as much 
influence as a blockheaded wooden Indian, I'd set my 
funeral for next Sabbath morning at 10 o'clock and the 
corpse should be ready." 

The influence of tli3 one man and the one woman has 
done wonders ere now, and is destined to astonish the 



THE CURE. — THE ONE MAN POWER. 11? 

ages as of yore. The influence of the on^ man or woman, 
designated by the writer, when on the platform, as "the 
one man power," has saved a race, a natw*i" and perhaps 
a world since the one man was created, and this 
wondrous work was only the application of the influence 
all possess. 

When there arose a necessity for the destruction of 
certain Philistines no army was raised to combat them 
on the field. "The pomp and circumstances of war" 
were not called into existence by a wise God to save his 
chosen. He but had His message conveyed to the one 
man — a blind slave toiling the weary hours away 
in the treadmill of the enemies of his people — and when 
the moment came the one man power blessed of God 
did a wondrous deed of valor. The Philistines, con- 
gregating together in a mighty temple, felt the need 
of amusement of a new kind, and having heard of the 
deeds of strength performed by Samson had him brought 
from the treadmill that they might witness his powers 
and make merry over his infirmities. Samson V hour 
of triumph had come. Bracing his mighty shoulders 
against the pillars of the temple, his heart looked up to 
God for strength sufficient for the task, and while his 
sightless orbs saw nothing round about, and the fools 
w T ere jeering the giant as he awaited a reply to his 
prayer, that prayer was being answered. The strength 
was being charged through vein, and cord, and muscle; 
the mighty arteries were swelling with renewed and 



118 SUNSHINE. 

increased power ; the veins upon those swarthy arms rose 
up like cords above the darkened skin and when, as a 
battery begins to pulsate as the current is turned full on, 
Samson felt that all was ready, he bent his shoulders 
toward the ground, and the one man power had silenced 
jeers and scoffs ; had brought down righteous retribution 
upon a race of rioting blasphemers and persecutors; had 
done God's will and so blessed a people. Samson 5 thou 
weak and mighty; weak in the hands of woman; giving 
thy hair to be woven in the loom ; giving thy strength 
and thy body as well to thy foes for the smile of a 
wanton, surely thou didst redeem all in the throes of that 
moment, when thou bent under the pillars of the house 
of thine enemies. 

The history of all great moral reforms has demon- 
strated the fact that revolutions of that character have 
invariably been brought about and consummated, not by 
the massing together of thousands of warriors upon fields 
of battle, but by this wonderful one man and one 
woman power. There is great strength in personality. 
Of a great general, his men said that his presence on the 
field was worth ten thousand men. He did not possess in 
his own person such strength, but he possessed the power 
of adding the strength of ten thousand men to the 
thousands he led into the fray. This magnetism has 
won reforms, the effect of w T hich has been world-wide. 
It was only Luther who opposed the diet at Worms, but 
that opposition has changed the religious complexion 



THE CURE. — THE ONE MAN POWER. 119 

of a world. It was only Wesley who waged war against 
the ceremonials of the established church, but the one 
man raised an army of millions — a veritable church 
militant, whose only boundary is that of the world 
itself. 

For many years in our own land God's people 
(humanitarians) denounced slavery as unjust and unholy. 
From thousands of pulpits, platforms, stumps and 
presses, the curse of slavery was fought, but the key- 
note of action had not been touched. The hour was not 
yet arrived, for the woman (not the man and the hour 
in this case) had not appeared. But the hour came at 
last and the woman rose to its need. The country was 
thrilled with a novel, purporting to depict life in the 
South. Critics called it "the only American novel ;" 
"the greatest novel ever written." They speak of it 
now as then, but falsely. The story is crude; critically 
judged it is full of faults of diction, of arrangement, 
of climaxes, of language. True, it was written when the 
grand brain and heart of its authoress were younger than 
they are now, and before her pen had taken on the 
cunning it now possesses, but it was the novel of the 
world for all that. Not as a novel, however, but 
speaking from its results, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a political and religious 
satire more powerful than any of Swift's. It was a 
sermon, a satire and a stump-speech — three in one. 
From the pages of a novel a sermon was preached that 



120 SUNSHINE. 

woke the hearts of a blinded people; a political speech 
was made that bound republicans and democrats together 
with bonds of humanity. The work caused the pennies 
to fall from the eyes of the corpse of humanity, and it 
sprung to its feet electrified and commenced knocking 
here and there giant blows from muscles long unused. 
That faulty novel opened the way and then filled the 
way with heroes. The North demanded a free nation 
and the slave-holders of the South refused the demand. 
They would leave the old flag first and they did. And 
then the shock came. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the 
shibboleth of the humanitarians, who cared more for 
freedom than for blood. Years of warfare followed the 
stroke, and then four millions of people held the broken 
manacles of long ages of slavery in their hands and 
thanked God. And the glorious consummation was 
brought about by "the one woman power," centered in 
brain and heart and soul of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
The personal influence of one woman has changed the 
character of a nation, and yet men and women assert 
that they "have no influence." 

One night in 1864 a little handful of tired-out "boys 
in blue" slept beside a peaceful stream, Cedar Creek, in 
the South. They slept and dreamed of homes far up in 
the North, of friends, wives, children and sweethearts. 
Early in the morning they were awakened from their 
sleep, not by the sounding of the reveille, the rattling 
of the drum and the shrill notes of the fife, but by a rattle 



THIC CURE. — THE ONE MAN POWER. 



121 



of musketry and the charge of a great body of rebel 
troopers. Many of our boys exchanged sleep for death, 
unknowing of the change. Those unharmed sprang 
from their tents in an instant; another, and their arms 
had been taken from the stacks and they were shoulder 
to shoulder attempting to prevent the oncoming of the 
enemy. But all in vain. They were outnumbered ten 
to one. They were beaten back and back, farther from 
the scene of their night's rest and their dead comrades. 
Bravely they tried to hold their ground, but the shots 
of the enemy reached the little company and laid one 
after another dead upon the green grass, under the blue 
sky and the rising sun. But they fought like heroes, 
sullenly contesting each foot of the ground over which 
they were driven, fighting like men, who, without hope, 
only desired to die as brave men die. They would be 
defeated, but they wanted their vanquishers to find the 
victory a sting. For twelve miles this unique battle 
lasted and then our boys sounded the call to retreat. As 
they did so, a broad, shining highway was reached, 
leading to a country town miles away. For this place 
our defeated heroes started, the tears coursing down 
their cheeks as they thought of dead friends marking a 
battle line twelve miles in length. 

As they reached the highway the first ones saw way 
off in the distance a black speck surrounded by a cloud 
of white, that seemed to be coming toward them with 
greatest speed. They knew not what it was and kept 



122 SUNSHINE. 

on toward the town, leaving the enemy in the rear, 
sullenly firing their farewell shots. The black speck 
drew nearer and nearer. Our boys became interested 
and watched it narrowly. By and by their ears began 
to hear the rattle and rumble and roar of a horse's hoofs, 
keeping time upon the beaten highway, and in wondrous 
quick measure, too. They could here the clash and 
clang of the iron shoes, which they understood, but the 
speed was beyond them. It was that of a meteor. By 
and by the black speck began to take shape. They saw 
two great coals of fire in the upper center, like the eyes 
of a demon bearing down upon them. Then they saw 
the fore part of a mighty black steed, which bore 
upon its back a burden — if a man, his face was bent 
in the horse's mane to free the eyes and nostrils from the 
cloud of dust the feet of the flying steed beat up from 
the highway. A little later and the boys saw two 
columns of blood spurting from the horse's nostrils, as 
if it were straining every nerve to be somewhere in good 
time. And still they pressed on to the town, not 
understanding. Closer came the horse and rider, heroes 
both; louder roared the music of the hoofs upon the 
highway. Faster and faster — surely never yet rode 
mortal man so fast. A moment more, and the steed 
charged by the first body of defeated soldiers. The 
rider lifted his head from the horse's mane, drew his 
sword from its scabbard and cried, "Forward, boys!" 



THE CURE. — THE ONE MAX POWER. 123 

Our boys turned and saw Phil Sheridan, from 
"Winchester, twenty miles away." 

Every soldier wheeled in his track as if all had been 
moved by one mechanical impulse. They took rank 
with the precision of veterans on dress parade. For- 
getting the losses of the morn, the dead comrades, and 
the sore defeat, they only remembered who was at the 
head and front, and with a genuine Yankee cheer they 
started after their brave leader. Is there need to tell 
more of the day ? That night our boys slept again by 
Cedar Creek with twelve thousand rebel prisoners. And 
it was "the one man power" of the Irish hero, Phil 
Sheridan, that won the day. 

This one man and one woman power is not the 
possession of one in a thousand. It belongs to all, and 
if all would but put it to work for the common good, the 
sorrows of the day would soon be made joys, the dark- 
ness would lose its gloom, and sunshine beam over all. 
Men would be better and women would be happier, and 
the old world take on a new garb, having in it more 
of the texture and color of the garment of white God's 
beloved are to w r ear in the Bye-and-Bye. Brothers and 
sisters, call up your influence for good. Don't let it rust 
out and rust you with it. There are souls waiting to be 
saved and you are the one elected to their salvation. 
"Go ye, and preach the gospel to all people," was not 
meant only for Paul and Peter, but for you and me. It 
did not refer but to the priest with his stole and the 



124 SUNSHLNE. 

minister with white cravat and a seven octave vest 
pushing his chin forty-five degrees toward the north 
star. It referred to all who were to come after Christ 
acknowledging Him as their own — to the merchant, the 
laborer and the farmer as well as to the priest and the 
preacher. And the gospel did not mean the creed of 
your church, the dogma of mine, or the article of faith 
of your neighbor's church over the way. It meant the 
universal gospel of love and charity and "peace on earth 
and good will to men" — all there is that Christ wants 
preached in all the religions that ever have been and 
ever will be. Get to work now. Satan has long been 
in the field. The harvest is ripe and the laborers are too 
few. You have been called long, and you dare not put 
it off longer lest your neighbor die unsaved and tell 
of your neglect when he stands at God's bar. 



CHAPTER XL 

SELF HELP. 

^^HE man who earnestly desires freedom from the 
slavery of drink dares not leave all in the hands 
of his friends. There is much that he alone can 
do to bring about the change in his life. The writer 
has known many drunkards who were constantly asking 
their friends "what shall I do to be saved?" nevertheless 
did nothing themselves, leaving their friends to do all. 
They never deserted the saloon or the old companions 
and really asked a miracle to be worked for their 
especial benefit. 

The drunkard who asks to be delivered from his 
living death must first ask consent of his will that the 
body may so bear suffering the while he is undergoing 
the first few days of total abstinence. Those days are 
full of pain of body and worse pain of mind. Death 
would be a relief at times. These pangs must be borne 
bravely, though the sufferer knows that one glass of 
drink w T ould end them. The saloon must be passed 
without stopping; its poisoned atmosphere is as danger- 



126 SUNSHINE. 

ous to the man asking to be saved as would be a powder 
magazine to a man carrying a lighted torch through it, 
The old companions must be shunned lest one asks him 
to "take something," which the poor man is liable to do 
before he even thinks of his present struggle for refornio 
Society of good and pure men and women must be 
sought, where the conversation touches upon everything 
but drink. The man must call every nerve and energy 
into the conflict with appetite, and these tilings he alone 
can do. His friends can furnish society and amusement, 
but he must seek it first. They can not offer these 
things to him while he leans against the bar of the 
groggery. 

Many men attempting to reform refuse to leave the 
old companions and the saloon. They assert that they 
will be stronger if they conquer amid the old associations. 
This may be true, but the writer has never yet found a 
man who conquered thus. For a few nights or days 
they may sit around the saloon in safety, but they soon 
weaken at the cold glances of the bar-keeper and the 
jeers and oft-repeated invitations to drink of their old 
cronies, who tell them not to be foolish, to drink enough 
and no more and all will be well. By and by they begin 
to feel themselves interlopers shut out from the closeness 
of the old companionship, and soon are found at the bar, 
having given up the struggle, and perhaps for life. The 
atmosphere of the saloon is dangerous to these men. It 
reeks with the poison of drink. The scent is constantly 



SELF HELP. 127 

in the air and soon weakens the resistance of the poor 
slave. It enters his body by the nostrils and the pores 
and takes possession in that way of the old citadel ; the 
man soon begins to feel its influence — weakly, of course 
— but the appetite awakened demands satiation and the 
poor fellow falls. In a purer atmosphere he might have 
stood. There is no reform for the victim of drink the 
while he refuses to help himself by staying away from 
the stronghold of the demon. He asks the help of 
friends, their prayers and other kind offices, but he does 
little himself to aid them. 

A little thing will awaken the old appetite. The 
writer knew a reformed man, lecturing on temperance, 
who had been a drunkard for fifteen years, losing his 
pulpit in one of the greatest churches of Pennsylvania 
by it. He was deposed from the ministry, and was 
compelled to seek support from a hard-working wife, 
toiling to keep alive a large family of children. For 
twelve years she fought successfully the battle of life for 
the one who should have spared her all work and care 
and sorrow. At the end of this time he signed the 
pledge and commenced working in the temperance field. 
For three years he held faithful; a few more months 
and his old position in the ministry was to have been 
given him. He began to suffer from too much public 
speaking. His throat grew inflamed at frequent intervals 
and something had to be done to relieve it. Satan 
whispered into his ear that whisky and glycerine was a 



128 SUNSHINE. 

cure for hoarseness. He had prepared an ounce of each, 
and gargled his throat frequently during the day and 
after a lecture. Glycerine is the sweet of fats; his 
medicine was, therefore, only sweetened whisky. The 
old appetite was awakened; it demanded more than a 
gargle. Shortly afterward the writer found the reverend 
brother in a railroad depot partially paralyzed, his coat 
sold for whisky and his face bearing the marks of a long 
debauch. He was taken care of, friends telegraphed for, 
and for days he hovered on the brink of delirium 
tremens. He recovered, once more essayed lecturing, 
once more found trouble with his throat, and again took 
the old remedy. For months he was tracked through 
Ohio, tramping from town to town, begging, obtaining 
money under false pretenses, sleeping in fence cornel's 
and barns, literally starving, and then lost track of. 
For months his family and friends have heard nothing 
of him and it is feared that he has found death — 
a victim to his old enemy, and all brought about by 
so little a thing as using a gargle of w r hisky for a sore 
throat. 

Right here the writer proposes benefiting his brothers 
of the lecture platform. For two years and a half he 
has stood upon the platform advocating temperance. 
He has suffered considerably from hoarseness. His 
cure is simple, sure and safe. After a lecture, if 
the throat feels sore, he gargles it with a teaspoonful 
of common pepper-sauce from the supper table, and 



SELF HELP. 129 

awakes next morning with voice clear as a bell. 
There is no danger in this remedy and he knows it to 
be effective. 

The writer knows another deposed minister, talented 
and worth saving. He is a member of the church 
and also of a great temperance order. His obligations 
are violated every few weeks. He asks the prayers 
of the church night after night, as likewise the assistance 
of his brothers and sisters of the order, but he does not 
help himself. Upon the first symptoms of a stomachic 
pain he remembers Paul's prescription for Timothy's 
epigastric troubles, and goes to the nearest saloon for a 
dose of brandy and ginger. He falls every time, and 
yet brandy and ginger is his stomachic panacea. One 
glass calls up the old appetite and for days he reels along 
the streets "drunk as a lord/' while wife and friends are 
weeping and praying. For weakness he imagines 
nothing better than a glass of drink. He will take 
one and no more. He does so and falls. Such 
men do not help themselves and friends can not do 
all. The days of miracles are ended and there is no 
hope for them. 

Self help, then, is the first requisite toward reform. 
Old associations must be given up, the home circle take 
the place of the saloon, and rest take the place of strong 
drink as a remedy for overwork and weakness. For 
pain, the doctor must prescribe and the poor sufferer 
must, under no circumstances, accept, even from a 



130 SUNSHINE. 

family physician, a medicine containing alcohol or one 
of the component parts. These things the drunkard 
alone can perform; friends are powerless to do them for 
him. 

When the man who asks freedom from drink is in 
earnest, he will do all he can to assist his friends 
and his God. These powers combined will win the 
victory, but all must work together. Let the poor 
debauchee then, feeling that the hour has come when 
he can no longer live a life of abject serfdom, make 
up his mind to do all that one weak man can do; 
his friends will then have an earnest of his sincerity, 
and work with a will, while a merciful God, seeing 
the determination of the laborers, will bless each effort, 
even unto a complete success. 

Yv T hen the appetite is unusually active and demanding 
its old food, the straggler must not give up; he 
must not seek to allay it by spending a few moments 
in the old resorts, as many do, determined that they 
will do no more. He must, if unusually nervous, and 
sleep refuses its rest, take a long walk with friends, 
if possible, out into the country by-ways, w T here there 
is nothing suggestive of drink; by peaceful streams 
and in woods and forests, w r here nature teaches the 
simplicity and pureness of real life; where the sky 
can be seen unclouded with smoke and the birds 
are singing cold-water praises to their Creator. The 
writer has known men to walk twenty miles, seeking 



SELF HELP. 131 

thus to allay the appetite. By and by the system 
becomes tired and every nerve and muscle calls for 
rest. The brain thus appealed to soon forgets the 
cry of appetite, and the man may go home, lie 
down, and a refreshing sleep will speedily come, and 
he will arise strong and ready for duty, with the 
appetite once more under subjection. 

Church or social meetings must also be attended 
as frequently as possible, w r here, in the duties of the 
hour, other elements of man's nature are called into 
action. These at work will quiet the portion of the 
system demanding stimulants, and at the end of the 
meeting the brain will be so tangled up with the 
problems of the hour as to be in no condition for 
listening to the demands of the body itself. Good 
books and reading matter of a quiet, moral tone are 
also great helps. Books which compel study to be 
understood should always be at hand, especially upon 
some subject in which the man is interested. If he 
be a lawyer, let him read of some intricate cases 
solved by wise heads. Let the man, whatever his 
avocation, read whatever will keep the brain at work 
trying to solve something. He will soon forget 
appetite in the demands of his new employment. 

To the man who is in earnest in his efforts to 
leave the old road for the new many helpful 
suggestions will constantly come to him, by which 
he may help himself to be free. His friends will 



132 SUNSHINE. 

take more interest in him if he does something to 
help them, and his own exertions will appeal more 
surely and strongly to the God of prayer than all 
the words he could utter — for words alone do not 
constitute prayer — words and works do. 




CHAPTER XII. 

TO YOUNG MEN — ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS, 
SOBRIETY. 

skillful marksman, intent on filling his game bag, 
is partial to the use of a rifle, and, with his great 
skill, sends the single ball direct between the 
eyes of the squirrel. A less skillful marksman, however, 
prefers a shot gun, and, putting down a pint of powder 
and two pints of shot, fires all over the tree, his 
scattering shots generally bringing down as much game 
as the direct shots of his more skillful friend. 

The reader has doubtless already found that this 
work has been written by one who, in firing at the 
demon drink, uses a mental shot-gun and scatters 
considerably. The writer upon the platform fires just 
such a charge as he does in this work; lacking the skill 
needed to take a single train of thought and carry it 
successfully along, he scatters all over the field of 
temperance. This work is meant to be a temperance 
mosaic and, although many topics are treated and those 
joining seem widest apart in their application, it is the 



134 SUNSHINE. 

writer's prayer that the completed work may be of the 
character of the mosaic work of the ancients, varied as 
to effect, but united as to value. Attempting to put 
some thoughts of value into each chapter, the writer 
hopes that they may sink into good ground and not be 
lost, surrounded, as they nevertheless are, by much that 
might be changed for the better. If the thoughts in the 
finished work — disconnected as they are and will be — 
will only be remembered after read, and acted upon by 
those to whom they are sent, the manner in which they 
are presented will be of little moment. 

"The advantages of sobriety" are known to the man 
who drinks better than to any other who may read this 
chapter. It is he alone who has so keenly felt and 
suffered the disadvantages of drink. He remembers 
with clear mind the comforts, joys and position that 
one by one were lost to him as he reeled down the street 
of Hell. Standing at the farther end of his course, he 
looks back and sees all the lares and penates — 
the old household idols — as they were in the day when 
he dared look every passer-by full in the face — sees 
them as when he worshiped them in the company of 
loved ones, now estranged. He sees that sobriety would 
not have brought him alone and friendless to the 
precipice yawning at his feet, and from the depths of 
which he hears roaring in his ears the cries of the lost 
who went down to death just before him. The drunkard 
needs little reference to the advantages of a sober life. 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS SOBRIETY. 135 

The boy, "to whom the first glass of wine is as delicious 
as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some 
newly discovered paradise," is the one to take a lesson 
from such a chapter. He it is whose judgment is 
blinded by the siren song from the sparkling depths 
of the glass; he it is who fancies life will always be as 
rosy as when the spirit of the first glass is coursing 
through his fired veins and brain; to him there comes 
no foreshadowed fate, no wrecked life, nor ruined soul. 
Could his eyes but be opened as he stands, glass in hand; 
at the upper end of the street of Hell, surely the work 
would be worthy. The writer will attempt to tell the 
boy the danger he incurs out of the experience of his 
own dark days, and from a memory charged with the 
fate of loved ones ; will attempt to show how manhood 
can be made glorious by temperance — how it has been 
ruined and lost by drink. 

The believers in predestination are fast drifting away 
and man has come to consider life very much in his own 
hands. Yet very few, taking advantage of this fact, 
make of their lives all they could make of ihem. 
To-day, more than ever before since the days of the 
great Greeks, men are living in accordance with the 
poetic life-maxim of Sardanapalus, the autocrat of the 
Orient, who said, "Eat, drink and love; all the rest is 
not worth a fillip." Our age is a fast one, it is true, an 
age crowded with incident like none that has been before 
it, and where incidents crowd thick and fast human life 



136 SUNSHINE. 

speedily adapts itself to such externals, and rushes on 
with faster and faster momentum, only to wear out soul 
and body far too soon. And in this fast life men are 
apt to desire whatever increases the pace of the journey. 
The philosophy of Sardanapalus is false, but men are 
now given to false philosophy in all departments of life. 
Theology must be false, or else hide its truths, if it be 
accepted to-day. It is an ism the w r orshipers in the 
synagogue demand and not a message from Christ. 
They know all about their suffering brother who got on 
a spree in Jericho and fell among congressmen. What 
they want is a new dogma that will teach them how to 
forget him. In medicine to-day, the man w r ho desires 
patients must use no poisons nor mineral remedies, at 
least not in his advertisements, and then the people 
flock to his consultation rooms, imagining that the old 
system will ruin them for life, notwithstanding the fact 
that their family physician, who used what his brain told 
him was right to use, has successfully fought the 
diseases of themselves and their parents before them for 
fifty years. This they know, and they don't know what 
he has been giving them, so they rush to the new doctor 
who uses no poisons (in his advertisements only) and 
state their cases, leaving their old doctor because he did 
use poisons, or else they would not have gotten well so 
soon under his treatment. False philosophy in law is 
just at present taking Blackstone, Coke and Littleton by 
the ears and leading them out of court. The ancient law 



ATTEIBUTES OF SUCCESS — SOBRIETY. 137 

of meum et tuum has been changed to admit a middleman 
(generally a lawyer) who takes everything for making 
the division. Murder, to-day, is only an evidence of 
insanity. If a man commits a murder in these days, in 
twenty-four hours every friend comes forward to prove 
the poor fellow's insanity (of course the writer has 
reference to men of wealth, poor men are murderers, 
insane or not,) and the court calls the afflicted before 
the bar, has a rocking chair brought in for his comfort, 
hands him an orange and a fan, and then, w r hile the tears 
course down the face of the marble statue of Justice way 
up on the dome, as well as the face of the judge himself, 
and all the court room, the affected judge proceeds to 
tell the jury how tenderly the poor murderer must be 
handled lest his feelings be hurt, and advises the speedy 
return of "not guilty," that the poor fellow may not be 
kept long in the impure atmosphere of the court. And 
so the jury, recognizing the fact that insanity may be 
needed by themselves ^some time, return such a 
verdict without leaving the box, and the judge, in 
announcing the verdict, makes Rome, or the <?ourt room, 
fairly howl with tearful strains, and, bidding good-bye to 
the persecuted murderer, asks him to call around next 
evening and have a game of whist. 

It is true that the murderer in his paroxysm of 
insanity was not so crazed but that he killed the one 
man of all the world that he wanted to kill, but of course 
this is only an evidence of his insanity; the befuddled 



138 SUNSHINE. 

brain is so cunning, you know. But the most curious 
part of it all is, that the man who did the shooting is 
never the least bit "off" after the trial and acquittal. 
Common sense would render the man incapable of future 
spasms of insanity, at least, though the philosophical 
unities in law might not thus be preserved. 

In education, likewise, false philosophy is the order 
of the day. The theory of the present age is that a 
great deal not learned at all is much better than half of 
it well learned, and so the pupil of the present is sent to 
school staggering under a load of books enough for a 
regiment. He never learns them, it is true, but he 
has looked into them previous to graduating, and 
consequently at the end of his school days graduates 
and gets half a sheep hide with "lux omnibus esto" on it 
in big letters, which we suppose means that there is luck 
(faulty grammar as well as spelling to say lux) in an 
omnibus full of books. The normal method, too, is now 
the rage among the higher scholars aspiring to the bench 
and the ferule, and though it is really the abnormal 
method, the professors speak well of the system, (those 
in charge, we mean) and the scholars are turned out 
finished in three months by the clock. 

The business of to-day has also much of the false in 
it, and the man who buys nothing short and sells it long 
soon gets wealthy. Since boards of trade and commerce 
became fashionable stores and manufactories are out of 
date, and the correct thing is to become a bull or a bear, 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — SOBRIETY. 139 

or both, and buy what you never saw and sell what you 
never had. All that is now needed to become a 
respectable merchant and owner of a good carriage and a 
poor conscience is to get a "plug" hat and a membership 
in the board, where, with enough money to cover a 
margin and enough cheek to cover a quarter section of 
land, a man may soon become one of the "heavy men" 
of his State. It is true he will have to bankrupt 
frequently, when he can't raise the wind in any other 
way, but that only makes him the more solid, and 
allows him to cover more margins than ever. 

Life to-day being both fast and false, it is not a 
wonder that whatever can hasten the momentum and 
gild the wrong should be eagerly accepted by the mass. 
Strong drink can do both, and under the teaching of 
false philosophy men accept it as something to help 
them along the journey of life. Were these false 
philosophies but done away with, and men were given 
to seeing aright in all things, strong drink would long 
since have gone out of use. But the false in theory 
speedily begets the false in practice; the false in essence 
soon necessitates the false in substance, and to-day, more 
than ever before, there seems to be a necessity for the 
demon of drink — something to drown care, to lighten 
sorrows and hasten the end. Of course, if the false in 
life could be changed to the true, this need would not 
exist. If philosophy were founded upon true principles 



140 SUNSHINE. 

of life, men would as easily live up to them as they now 
live up to the false, and the world would grow into 
right in all things, where now the tendency is 
different.* 

It is the false philosophy of life to-day that is 
responsible for the crimes, the sorrows and the vices 
of the age, and we can only pray on and work on, hoping 
ever for the change which, if it should bring the 
millennium with it, would at least prevent any falling 
back into the age of the unreal, the unwise and the 
false. 

To assert, however, that the dangers of a fast age can 
not be avoided would be only to expose one's want 
of the commonest of common sense. To assert that 
even in such an age a man could not possibly throw off 
the old life and clothe himself in a new and better one 
would be a confession of ignorance. Through all the 
glaring faults'of a philosophy founded upon the unwise 
there runs a vein of the philosophy of the ages, strong 
and pure, and though the mass are more readily blinded 
and won by the unreal, the real has its followers and 
the philosophy of right its devotees. Sin is everywhere 
prevalent, but none the less so is God manifest, and His 
people working on for the right. The man who desires 
to reform can easily find the friends he needs. There 
are two paths of life to-day, running parallel, the false and 
the true, and to the latter should the young mind 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — SOBRIETY. 141 

be directed constantly by all who take an interest in the 
development of youth. 

The false philosophy is the guide in the false path 
of life. The fast age of to-day has filled the road, 
but the growing interest in the true is to empty it 
by and by. 

To the young man, then, who imagines strong drink 
an aid in life's battle, we appeal. His mind has been 
warped by the -falseness of the times, but that is no 
reason no attempt should be made to change its belief. 
The object of life is to reach the heights of fame and 
of fortune. The barefooted boy driving home the cows 
looks forward to the day when his name shall be known 
of men. Up the heights mankind constantly travel — 
some guided by the false philosophy so prevalent in this 
age, others by the true philosophy founded on justice, 
honesty and religion. The former may go far up the 
mountain; they have been known to reach the crest, but 
only to fall back to the base never to rise again. They 
never reach the top and stay there, yet the swiftness 
with which they make their partial ascent is ruinous to 
the honest toiler who is passed by those who started long 
after he did. 

Hand in hand with strong drink no man has yet 
reached the heights of fame or of fortune to remain 
there. Few get above the half-way station. Drunken- 
ness and greatness never went together — the sober toiler 
has won all the fame that has ever been won. 



142 SUNSHINE. 

Sobriety, moreover, has its advantages along the 
journey, while yet one is far from the heights. 
It is the sober boy who gets the vacant clerkship 
in the great store. The boy whose nights are spent 
upon the street or in the saloon, swearing and 
putting on the airs of manhood, is under the eye 
of the employers of every town. When they need 
an assistant all the influence of friends can not 
induce them to employ the boy or young man who 
wastes his time. They are after a boy whose evenings 
are spent at home in the companionship of books 
and loved ones. When there comes a promotion 
in any establishment, it is not the fashionable clerk, 
who plays billiards, drinks his wine and drives 
out on the avenue on the Sabbath, who goes up 
higher; it is that quiet, shy, ill-dressed, but very 
attentive young man, who is never laid up at home 
on Monday morning with a headache, and whose 
nights are spent with his widowed mother or the 
woman he loves, who is promoted. Surely his sober 
life has its advantages. 

When the dark days of trade come, and the 
force of clerks must be reduced that the dull days 
may be tided over, the clerk who devotes his every 
hour to his employer's business, not dropping his 
pen or his work in hand the moment it strikes the 
hour of twelve or six, who is not afraid to work a 
few moments overtime, and who is known to be 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS SOBRIETY. 143 

temperate and frugal, is never dismissed. The one 
who goes is the flashily-dressed, loud-talking young 
man, who refers to his employer as "the old man," 
and who spends his nights with questionable com- 
panions. There were no advantages to him in 
the glass of drink he w 7 ent out for during the day 
and indulged more freely in at night. That quiet 
clerk who kept his position has risen in thousands 
of cases until his name joined that of his old 
employer on the bill-heads of the firm. Surely 
there were advantages for him in total abstinence. 

P. T. Barnum, the circus proprieter, lecturer, million- 
aire, and mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, is a 
teetotaler. To total abstinence he ascribes all his 
wonderful success in life. He has been financially 
ruined three times in the past twenty years, but 
his clear brain has brought him out all right 
every time. He employs in his great shows none 
but total abstinence men, discharging all who violate 
their pledges, and at the end of the season giving 
the faithful ones a money prize as a reward for being 
true to their employer and themselves. Besides that, 
he keeps their names and hires the same working 
force every year, because they have been tried and 
not found wanting. Surely, even in the lowly life 
of a circus hand, there are advantages in sobriety, for 
P. T. Barnum is a kind master, a liberal employer and 
"sure pay." 



144 SUXSHIXE. 

George Peabody sawed wood for a lodging, once upon 
a time, and though a common day laborer for years he 
never indulged in strong drink, and died worth millions 
of money and, above all that, beloved by all the nation 
for his giant heart. Sobriety was the key-stone of his 
success and nothing else. Had it no advantages, then, 
for him ? 

The young man who is welcomed in good society is 
not the one with the smell of drink upon him and whose 
talk smacks of the race course and the saloon. Parents 
attempt to keep such men out of the society of their 
daughters, and wisely too. But the honest, upright, 
Christian man, who looks not upon the wine, is the one 
whom parents willingly receive in their parlors, and 
although in the parlance of slang he may be "slow" and 
"soft," there is more of the man and the hero in him, 
old-fashioned as he may be, as judged by the experts, 
of the card-room and the saloon, than in half a hundred 
of his would-be detractors. To the man who loves the 
society of pure women, and none worthy the name 
of man values anything more, sobriety has its decided 
advantages. 

In politics, although that national calamity is 
cursed with many drinking men, the sober man 
rises highest and is closer to the hearts of his con- 
stituents. "Voters speedily find that a drinking 
congressman, senator or representative can not give a 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — SOBRIETY. 145 

proper degree of attention to his duties, and he soon 
finds himself losing ground. Beverly Douglas, 
congressman from Virginia, became, while in that 
position, a notorious drunkard, disgracing his constitu- 
ents time and time again. He attempted to run 
for re-election a year ago, but was ignominiously 
retired to the shades of private life. A few weeks later 
he died of delirium tremens. 

Hon. George H. Butler, United States Consul to 
Constantinople, became notorious among the American 
residents of that city for his debaucheries and was 
finally called home in disgrace, where, returning to 
Washington, he sank lower and lower and in the 
summer of 1879 was sent to the work-house as a common 
vagrant. The fate of Douglas and Yates, of Illinois, 
surely prove that in the political field sobriety is 
decidedly advantageous. 

When it can be said of a young man that he drinks, 
the finger of shame is speedily pointed at him. No 
store wants him as clerk, no bank wants him as cashier, 
no manufactory wants him as overseer or foreman, 
no school wants him as a teacher, no young woman who 
respects herself dare receive his company, no church 
wants him as a member, and, after the fever of life 
is ended, Heaven itself is closed against him with 
those terrible words above its portals, "No drunkard 
shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven." 

Where, then, are the advantages of drink? He 



146 SUNSHINE. 

who indulges in it is a pariah — an outcast. Friends, 
loved ones and position leave him one by one and 
he totters and reels to the end of the street of Hell, 
dying friendless and alone. 

To the boy starting out on life's journey total 
abstinence opens every door. It is the "open sesame" 
of the Arabian Nights to honor, fame and wealth. 
He is trusted and received everywhere and, wasting 
no hours of life in evil companionship or amid 
impure surroundings, reaches the heights so much 
the sooner. Truly there are advantages in sobriety 
to ^very man trying to make of his life a 
success. 

To the young, then, the writer unhesitatingly advises 
the signing of the pledge. Had he but signed it 
before the first glass was taken, seven years of 
sorrow would never have been suffered; friends 
would never have been estranged, positions lost, 
and health shattered. To-day, instead of having 
to devote every hour to the "battle for bread," 
he could have sat under his own vine and fig 
tree, and, in the society of wife and child, lived 
a heaven on earth. As it is he has lost seven 
years that might have brought him almost to the 
crest of life's royal mountain of success. The 
upward ascent now is doubly hard, when brain 
and muscle and body have been weakened by the 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — SGBBIETY. 147 

wrongs of the past, but, God helping him, he will 
struggle on, only stopping long enough by the 
wayside to destroy, if possible, the thorns that 
may pierce the feet of other toilers and to point them 
to the right path. 




CHAPTER XIII. 

TO YOUNG MEN. ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS, 

LABOR. 

'ITH determination, honesty, temperance and 
labor, every youth in our land can rise to 
distinction. Without those attributes there can 
be no success. The first necessity of life is labor, and 
that labor conducted earnestly, temperately and honestly 
will bring its reward. To-day, in our land, labor is 
unfashionable in certain circles and a race of idlers, 
dishonest and vicious, is the result. Compulsory 
education and compulsory labor would not be bad 
policy for this country to-day. Honest labor is the 
foundation of personal as well as national success. 
Labor is the wealth of a nation, not money, and the 
more men at work it possesses, and the fewer idlers, the 
larger becomes the revenue. There is a necessity for 
a change in this land, and none sees it more than those 
who are rearing boys incapable of taking care of 
themselves. 

'A young man stepped into the office of the 



« i 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — L.ABOB. 149 

Indianapolis Rolling Mill not long since and asked for 
work. 

" 'What can you do V asked the president. 

" 'I don't know/ said the young man. 

"'Have you a trade ?' 

"'No, sir.' 

" 'Where did you come from ? ' 

'"From Pennsylvania/ 

"'Are you a German V 

" 'No, sir ; I am an American/ 

'"If you were a German, or an Irishman, or a French- 
man, I could set you to work, because you would know 
how to do something, but an American don't know 
anything about practical business." 

"This reply may not apply to all Americans, but is 
lamentably true to a great extent. In Germany the 
boy is brought up where he sees something done, and 
has some idea of doing it. Very few Irishmen or 
Germans but know how to turn over a few rods of 
ground and raise something upon it. Most of them 
have some idea of mechanical operations, the uses 
of materials and of tools. 

"It is those born in America who are ignorant and 
idle. It is the false notion that a man does not need 
to labor, or that he can get his living by his wits, that 
causes a large part of our idleness and distress. Begin 
at once to learn something; no matter your age learn 
some practical pursuit at once." — Scientific American. 



150 SUNSHINE. 

The above plain words are true ones, and heartily- 
deserved by the younger generations of the United 
States. According to the social code, to-day in use all 
over our land, the young man who works is the young 
man who is unfit for respectable society. Young ladies, 
whose fathers boiled soap or made candles till wealth 
came, hold up their hands in holy horror at the idea 
of being introduced to a young man, who, having a well- 
stocked brain, stands behind a counter, measuring tape 
or weighing sugar, or doing days' work at anvil or 
bench, or in the machine shop. Such men, honest, 
educated and virtuous, are ostracized, while society's 
door flies wide open to admit the simpering, addle-pated 
nincompoop, whose education can be summed up in 
Latin — nil — and whose knowledge of literature is so 
great that he "read Shakespeare when it first came out." 
These fashion plates, who part their hair and their 
name in the middle, and would die of brain fever if one 
hair should be placed on the wrong side, are the pets 
of society, and girls, who are really educated, prefer 
them to men who work and are educated. And these 
same shallow-brained fools marry these girls, and in a 
few years scandal, discovery, divorce, and oftentimes 
suicide result. 

Young men, knowing how to open the doors of 
society, and preferring the company of such girls, many 
of them as mentally poor as the beaux themselves, shun 
honest labor as though a plague were upon it. They do 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — LABOR. 151 

not aspire to a high standing among their fellow-men — 
they do not seek political position or literary greatness 
—their only desire is to bask in the sunshine of society's 
belles and waste life, never imagining "that labor is 
manhood." 

Parents are often responsible for this state of affairs, 
and they take their boys from school, dress them up in 
men's clothes at sixteen, making them look like baby 
monkeys; allow them pocket money to spend for cigars 
and billiards, and imagine that society will repay them 
in one way or another for their act of spoiling a first- 
class mechanic to make a first-class fool. 

Other parents, forgetting that their fortunes came 
from honest toil, forgetting that every profession is 
overcrowded, except at the top, send their boys, with 
twenty-five ounces of brain matter, to college to become 
lawyers, doctors, clergymen or editors, and after a four 
years' course, give them money to put up a shingle, 
forgetting that the custom of a professional comes not 
from his sign swinging above the pavement, but from 
his words and acts. Boys that would make excellent 
mechanics, clerks or printers, are turned loose most 
damnably poor lawyers, doctors, clergymen or editors, 
and after drifting from pillar to post for years they are 
finally compelled to develop into first-class beats and 
sponges, unless father's money is sufficient for them to 
hide their want of brains behind. One professional man 
out of fifty makes a living; one out of five hundred 



152 SUNSHINE. 

makes a fortune; the balance hang on the outskirts of 
their chosen field of life work unnoticed and unworthy 
of notice, while in the trades ninety-nine out of every 
hundred conscientious workers make an honest living, 
and many ascend to the top. 

Every city is full of useless boys and men, who 
believe that hard work is degrading, and hence they are 
content to take their tobacco out of another man's box, 
and wear holes in store boxes and salt barrels, waiting 
for something to turn up, and that something never does 
turn up, for Fortune has to be wooed and won — she never 
drops her bounties at the feet of waiting Micawber. 

Let parents teach their boys and their girls as well to 
work at anything honorable. Don't spoil a good 
blacksmith by making a poor lawyer, who will be 
briefless all his life, or by making a preacher who can 
only preach second-hand sermons. We have more 
respect for the man who makes an honest livelihood 
back of a plow, or digging the foundation of a building, 
than for the perfumed exquisite who lives off his father 
and mother, and only knows enough to go in when it 
rains. 

Labor is the true solution of life's problem, and the 
kind of labor that each individual is best fitted for is 
the kind Providence created him to do. This thing of 
flying in the face of Providence brings suffering and 
want in every instance. Away, then, young men, with 
every thought of a life of professional ease unless from 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS LABOR. 



153 



your earliest years you have stood head and shoulder 
above your fellows ! Professional life is the hardest and 
most exciting of all. The writer has followed it for ten 
years, and is not worth a dollar beyond his needs. He 
is the slave of others, and is not the freeman the 
plowboy is. And he is a worker in his profession, too. 
Day and night he studies — often till daylight — that he 
may at least keep pace with his fellows. The mechanic 
rests when supper time comes, and with his loved ones 
takes his ease; true men respect him for his true 
manhood, and he is loved by God for his courage. The 
professional men, the editor, the teacher, the clergyman, 
lawyer and physician call not one hour their own. 
Each and every one must be sacrificed to another's 
wants. 

Young men, turn your hands to any kind of labor 
that is honest and profitable. Better have dirty hands 
than a filthy soul. Better by hard work in the open 
air ruin your complexion than in society's whirl ruin 
your soul, or ruin that of a too trusting maiden. And 
the present hot-house, waltzing, fast-living society of 
to-day is the home of scandal and seduction the world 
over. 

Be men, then, my young friends, remembering that no 
one is a man who is not strong enough to overthrow all 
obstacles in the rush of life. No one is a *nan who does 
not, when there is such a necessity for labor, fulfill the 
law of labor as laid down in the beginning. If wealth 



154 SUNSHINE. 

is even yours, your spare hours are not yours alone, but 
belong, to a certain extent, to your neighbors. Cultivate 
them that you may give out knowledge on the journey 
of life. But above all things be not dependent upon 
another. Use your early years for the days of old age, 
that they may be full of comfort, and be not ashamed of 
any means towards that end, and then when the end 
shall come there will be some one left who shall utter 
above your senseless clay: "Here was a man!" 

Let us live so as to be worthy the great gift of life, 
and struggle hard for eminence, remembering that great- 
ness comes as often to the humble followers of toil as to 
those who sit higher up on the ladder of life. Franklin, 
Morse, Captain Cook, Edison, Lincoln, Grant, Dickens, 
Burns, Moore, Edson, Howe, McCormick, and- a 
thousand of the world's best beloved, came up from the 
ranks. They are the home of geniuses. Muster in line 
and work up, for there is glory and profit and eternal 
rest in such a life. Strive for the right ! 



J 




CHAPTER XIV. 

TO YOUNG MEN. ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS, 

PLUCK, EDUCATION. 

' GES and ages ago, the wise men of the East, the 
seers, magi, and philosophers held to the belief 
that somewhere in the w r aters, on the earth, or in 
its bowels there existed a small stone, known as the 
philosopher's stone, which once found would make its 
possessor "chief among ten thousand," granting him 
.every distinction he craved, wealth, fame, honor, and all 
that man held dear. And so these blinded men, 
forgetting the philosophy of the ancient law, "By the 
sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread ;' } forgetting the 
law of labor laid down in the beginning, devoted their 
lives to the pursuit of the fabled stone. From youth to 
decrepit age they toiled along the shores of many waters, 
in the beds of the streams, deep down in the bowels of 
the earth and found it not. Dying, the search was 
bequeathed to their sons, and they toiled till death 
came. Dynasty succeeded dynasty, kingdoms rose, 
tottered and fell, cycle followed cycle, the world grew 



156 SUNSHINE. 

older, and still men sought the philosopher's stone — the 
royol road to the heights. They never found it. 
Men began to believe more in the real and seen 
and less in the unseen and the fabled. The search was 
given up and the fable exploded. 

But in this fast nineteenth century, when the fable has 
been dead for centuries of time, man has taken up the 
search for that which never existed and proved that it 
does exist. In a word, the philosopher's stone of the 
ancients has been found, and to-day it is the property 
of every boy and young man who wills to own it. It is 
no more than the simple word pluck — energy — determi- 
nation. "With pluck the boy is sure to win the battle 
of life, if with it are coupled honesty and temperance. 
The boy who wills to succeed does succeed. If he goes 
into the fight with sleeves rolled up, muscles strained 
for every struggle, determined to come out first best, he 
never fails. Pluck wins every battle; luck wins 
none. 

The Micawber, sitting around on store boxes, salt 
barrels and curbstones, swapping fish stories, campaign 
lies, and borrowing chewing tobacco, never yet made 
his mark. He waits for something to turn up, and the 
only thing that ever turns up for him is spades, and they 
turn up the sod for him after a time and he is laid away 
to rest and the world is the better when he is put out 
of sight. These "sitters around" never left their 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — PLUCK — EDUCATION. 157 

impress upon the busy, bustling world. The writer 
studied a long while to find out the reason of their cre- 
ation and found it at last in Louis Figuer's work on "The 
To-morrow of Death." That French savant explained 
that when a man died and his body was buried, it began to 
corrupt and then to give out certain gases, which, rising 
earthward, entered the roots of grass, plants and flowers, 
making them to grow faster, sweeter and taller. And 
the writer, putting this and that together, came to the 
conclusion that the "sitters around" were created to die, 
be planted, to corrupt, and give forth gases, which were 
to act upon the roots of weeds and make them grow, and 
God knows what the weeds are good for. 

The plucky boy, however, soon makes his mark. He 
is not afraid of work. He revels in it; he sees in it the 
means by w T hich he is to reach the heights. He does 
not believe that Fortune will ever hunt him out and lay 
her favors at his feet, if he does nothing but sit around 
and wait for her. He knows that she has to be sought 
earnestly, if found at all. He knows the milkmaid does 
not go into the barnyard while the early dews are 
falling, sit down on her three-legged stool, put the milk 
pail at her feet, and wait for the cow to back up to be 
milked. He knows that she goes direct to the calm-eyed 
kine and gets the supply of milk for the morning Java. 
Just so the plucky boy knows that he has to seek Dame 
Fortune and woo her earnestly and his life is seldom a 
failure. 



158 SUNSHINE. 

The history of every millionaire is the history of pluck 
— determination. Howe, the sewing machine inventor, 
though poor in this world's goods, was rich in energy. 
He toiled year after year in poverty and darkness, never 
losing hope, never giving up in despair and seeking 
consolation in drink, hoping, praying and working, and 
by and by he emerged into the light, leaving at his death 
a fortune of many millions of dollars, and dying with 
the gratitude of millions of toiling women for labor 
lightened by his plucky fight against fate. 

Shakespeare, the son of a wool-carder, with pluck as 
his only heritage, left his impress for all time on a world. 
Captain Cook, the circumnavigator of the globe, born in 
a mud hut, toiled manfully for success and reached the 
heights at last. Thomas Edison, whose electric wonders 
have made him famous, is a proud expositor of what 
pluck can do for the American boy. He formerly sold 
peanuts and yellow-backed literature on railroad trains, 
learned telegraphy while loafing about railway stations, 
and has already, while not thirty years of age, patented 
nearly two hundred original and wonderful inventions, 
many of them heretofore deemed impossible. 

President Lincoln, the unlettered rail-splitter of the 
Illinois prairies, was always full of energy and determi- 
nation, and by his pluck rose to the highest position on 
American soil, and what is more, bore heavenward, when 
he died, the chains from the limbs of four million 
slaves. 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS PLUCK — EDUCATION. 159 

Goodyear, the inventor of hardened rubber, MeCor- 
mick, of reapers and mowers, were both poor boys, with 
nothing but their own determination to help them up 
life's mountain, but they rose, nevertheless. 

History everywhere teems with the success of 
determination. "Wealth and influential connections are 
w T ell enough in their way, but they never have been and 
never will be the stepping stones to greatness. The 
lower level of life seems to have sent more recruits to the 
heights than the highest level. Poor boys, blessed with 
nothing but health, strength, honesty, temperate habits 
and pluck, have filled the places of honor and of fame 
and become the millionaires of the world since the 
earliest ages. And the boys of to-day, in our own land, 
blessed with the grand advantages of free education and 
a republican form of government, in which the poor man 
equals his neighbor in Madison Square in all that 
citizenship implies, have no earthly reason for failures in 
life. Determined to win in the struggle, they may go 
higher than man has ever gone before. Let them be 
but full of energy, making each hour tell, refusing no 
labor that is honest, studying in spare moments to 
improve the brain, forsaking all companions who can 
not help them up, eschewing all vices, seeking pure 
society or none, feeling themselves as good as the best 
and no better than others who are honest and true, and 
though the way may be long and tedious and painful, 
there will come a turning point, when the eye shall see 



160 SUNSHINE. 

only beauteous vistas, the feet will no more be pierced 
with thorns, the soul will become light and free, and 
the rest of the ascent will be sweet and pleasant, and the 
crest of the evergreen mountain be reached in good 
time, and fortune, fame and honor will await them to 
crown them w T hen the last milestone is passed, the last 
nerve strained, the last labor done. 

The philosopher's stone is before the boy of to-day. 
It will be well if he understands the value of the prize 
and seizes it for the first skirmish in his battle toward 
success. Let him value it aright, use it only in honest 
labor and strivings, and while the Micawbers are 
whining that times are hard and fate is unpropitious, he 
will know nothing of either, crowned as he will be with 
the fruits of honest, earnest toil, and the bread he shall 
eat by the sweat of his brow will be sweeter than all the 
luxuries of the palace — sweetened as it will be with the 
reward of self-help. 

In the battle of life another help toward success, 
aiding materially labor and pluck, will be found 
education. In other chapters the waiter has shown the 
advantages to the young man of temperance, labor and 
pluck; honesty needs no illustration to prove its neces- 
sity in the struggle; it is self-evident, and to these 
attributes he desires to add education. Free schools 
have done much for republican America; they have 
done much for our citizens, but the boy or man who 
devotes his ten hours per day to labor can derive no 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — PLUCK — EDUCATION. 161 

benefit from them. But this is no reason why he should 
not receive a good education. No young man but has a 
spare hour before or after the toils of the day are ended. 
Let him give this spare hour to his brain and a good 
education will result. It is the belief of the writer that 
the toiler who is educated is the best workman. He 
believes that the educated blacksmith can make the 
best horseshoe, the educated farm boy can cleave the 
straightest furrow across the field, the educated clerk 
can do up a pound of sugar neater and use less paper and 
string. He believes education a grand lubricator of the 
wheels of honest labor. The poor boy, then, who is 
denied, by reason of his day's work, the schools of the 
land, should take the spare hour of his day and devote 
it to self-improvement. Thank God books are cheap 
in the land, and one hour per day, zealously given to 
study for a year, will make a total of three hundred and 
twelve hours (excluding Sabbaths, of course, though 
Biblical history can well be studied on that day,) and 
three hundred and twelve hours are exactly fifty-two 
school days, or over ten weeks' schooling — more than a 
full session at a normal institute. Many can devote two 
hours per day to study, and thus each year they would 
gain about twenty-one weeks' schooling, reckoning six 
hours per day and five days per week, the present time- 
rate of schools in our land. A teacher or minister 
would gladly tell the young student what books to 
purchase, or loan them to him, and many could help 



162 SUNSHINE. 

him in the intricate lessons. In this way every laborer 
could educate himself and lose no time. The educated 
laborer at once takes a foremost position among the 
workmen; he is the one chosen for the more important 
tasks; he is the one promoted, all things else being 
equal, and, if by economy and temperance he has laid by 
a little sum with which to go into business on his own 
account, he finds himself ready for the new position, his 
brain readily adapting itself to its new features. A 
boy or man, working at any labor, if educated, will find 
easy entrance into society higher than that of his fellows, 
society that can help him up in more ways than one, and 
if he reaches the very heights of success in his later 
years he is not laughed at for mistakes, his education 
having fitted him long since for the position. 

The writer earnestly advises education to the boy who 
wants to make a man of himself; advises as many hours 
spent in reading as can be spared from labor and needed 
rest. And right here he would advise the youth of the 
country to beware of impure literature — boys' weekly 
newspapers and yellow-backed and dime novels. Such 
literature, turned out by millions of copies from the 
giant presses of New York City, is doing as much to 
ruin our young men and boys as strong drink itself. 
Such papers and novels are but a repository for slang of 
the lowest description, lying adventure and vice 
triumphant. The language is a positive curse to our 
boys, as it is inelegant, far from grammatical and foul as 



ATTKIBUTES OF SUCCESS — PLUCK — EDUCATION. 163 

death. Boys' brains have been turned by these emissaries 
of Satan for years past, and the printer, editor and 
proprietor of all such sheets deserve years of imprison- 
ment for the harm they have already accomplished. 
And yet Christian book-sellers have these papers and 
books in stock. They should be indicted for dealing in 
dangerous literature. We heartily advise our boys to 
beware of this trash, to read only what will benefit and 
instruct, read to learn, and only read when the brain 
asks for such pabulum. Lay the foundation in early 
years for an education, if it has not already been laid in 
school, and when, with honesty, temperance and pluck, 
the toiler has reached the crown of life's mountain, he 
will see what a help his hours of study have been. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — THRIFT. 

"N writing a series of "talk" to young men on the 
different attributes of success in life, the writer 
would be negligent of duty did he fail to point the 
seeker after a dwelling place on life's heights to that prime 
factor in all lives that have been successful— thrift. In 
a certain sense, the word thrift itself means success, but it 
is in its meaning of "wise managing, economy, a habit of 
saving," that the writer desires to present it to his young 
readers. 

In a conversation held with a fellow traveler on a 
train, the writer was told by his seat-mate that for 
thirteen years he had made at least two thousand dollars 
per year and did not have a dollar ahead from one year's 
end to another. His salary just covered his expendi- 
tures and no more. He knew the gentleman and 
his circumstances and knew also that one-half of his 
yearly salary would have been amply sufficient for the 
maintenance of his family respectably. In fact, one 
thousand dollars was all that the spendthrift devoted to 



ATTRIBUTES OP SUCCESS — THRIFT. 165 

the needs of his family; the rest he laid out in purchasing 
the reputation of being "a hail fellow, well met," among 
"the boys." Mr. Smith (we will call him that because, 
in the first place, it is not his name, and in the second 
place the name Smith is so weirdly romantic and 
strange,) was by no means a drunkard. True, he took 
his half dozen glasses of drink per day with surprising 
regularity, and sometimes more. Disliking to drink 
alone, "the boys" were called to his aid, and these 
glasses of drink, a like number of cigars each day, 
theaters, races, parties and the like, took the other 
thousand dollars each year from Mr. Smith's pocket. 

After thirteen years of successful business life Mr. 
Smith was financially no better off than the least paid 
man or boy who worked for him, and nearly a decade and 
a half of his life had heen worse than wasted. Worse than 
wasted, because the habit of never looking ahead had so 
completely fastened itself upon him that nothing could 
change it, and when he comes to die he will, ten to one, 
be buried by the society of which he is an erratic 
member and his family will be left unprovided for. 

We do not attribute this man's wasted life to drink, 
for he is not (for a wonder) a slave to it. His consti- 
tution does not seem impaired by his convivial habits, 
and he is always ready for business. His enemy has 
been, and will be so long as he lives, a want of thrift. 
Had he commenced at the start of his business life the 
habit of saving but a small sum each week, to-day he 



166 SUNSHINE. 

might have been comparatively "well off." An hundred 
dollars a year saved from his salary, with interest, would 
at least have given him to-day a couple of thousand 
dollars ahead, and a long spell of sickness need not have 
worried him as to where the bread and butter for the 
loved ones was to come from. But at the very least that 
man could have laid away five hundred dollars per year 
during those thirteen years; he should have saved a 
thousand. To-day, however, deprived of a situation, 
he would be on the list with hundreds of others who are 
puzzled as to where the next bite is to come from. 

After a young man has determined to let temperance, 
honesty and pluck be his guide through life, he should 
add to this trinity a determination to look after the 
pennies — a determination to save something from his 
weekly wage towards the future. A cent a week placed 
in a tin bank is only fifty-two cents per year, but if it is 
all that can be spared from life's necessities, the time 
may come when the handful of pennies may be worth 
thousands. Not in themselves, even the most generous 
of compound interests could not bring that about, but 
the habit the saving of the pennies created of a certainty 
would. It would pave the way to greater savings 
when wage became higher, and the penny wpuld 
soon become a dollar and the dollar ten, as the 
years rolling round made the thrifty man's labor 
more valuable. 

The history of most of our men of great wealth has 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS THRIFT. 167 

been the history of the penny. Peabody sawing wood 
and Daniel Drew driving mules are episodes in the 
history of those men. But with a determination to save 
and look ahead, no power under the sun could make 
them sawyers of wood and drivers of mules through all 
their lives. Their early pennies laid away for a rainy 
day were but stepping stones to dollars and from dollars 
they went step by step to hundreds, thousands and to 
millions. And the pennies of youth were the cause 
of it all. 

The writer knows, intimately, a man who, years ago, 
came to this country from the land of his birth, fair 
Italy, and, like all his countrymen, he had a soul for 
music. Music was his idol, and that he might never 
want the means of gratifying his musical taste he 
brought with him a hand-organ, something by no means 
singular in an Italian. Once in this country lie con- 
cluded to be generous and to allow his new countrymen 
to hear the beauties of Ernani, Trovatore, Pop Goes the 
Weasel, Sally in our Alley, and the other operatic airs his 
music-box contained. Accordingly he threw his organ 
over his shoulder and, without knowing a word of the 
English language, tramped the country over, grinding 
his organ and — saving the pennies. The poor organ- 
grinder did not propose always dealing in curbstone 
operas; his brain roamed higher, and in country by- 
ways and along dusty roads, taking his noonday rest, he 
studied, from a well-worn volume, the language of the 



168 SUNSHINE. 

land of his adoption. After a time, when he could read 
and speak English, he got a position as "devil" or 
errand boy in a newspaper office and — still saved the 
pennies. To-day the poor Italian organ-grinder is 
owner of an influential Ohio newspaper, is his own 
editor and manager, owns several choice bits of property 
and has a large family of sons and daughters, well edu- 
cated, beautiful and interesting, and the closest observer 
fails to discover, in either parents or children, the least 
traces of Italian traits or customs. They are Americans 
enterprising, shrew^d and capable, and all to be 
attributed to pluck, honesty, temperance and — saving 
the pennies. 

The history of the world teems with instances of 
genius overwhelmed with misfortunes because of the 
want of economy and thrift. Chatterton, a suicide at 
twenty; Byron, a prisoner in his own house for debt; 
Swift, Gay, and a dozen others more interested in the 
procuring of the next meal than in a new world, slaves 
each and all of them to want of common sense in the 
saving of their spare earnings. The ant and the grass- 
hopper fable preaches a powerful sermon, if only young 
America (and young America's father as well) would 
accept the application. Youth is the time to save ; age 
is the time to enjoy the labors and sacrifices of youth. 
The boy who spends every dollar as fast as earned will 
soon anticipate his wage-day and spend on credit, and 
debt is the Old Man of the Sea on thousands of modern 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — THRIFT. 169 

Sinbads, crushing them fairly into the earth — a 
hideous nightmare for waking hours. Better, my 
boy, a half meal paid for than a feast on credit. 
Better a suit part rags and the rest air and ventilators, 
if the suit is your own, than a broadcloth one 
that belongs entirely to the tailor. Keep out of debt 
and always keep ahead of the world and its 
demands, if it is only a dollar you have to the 
good. A man without debts, with a good situ- 
ation and a dollar ahead is a man who can laugh 
at fate. 

My boy, let your youthful years be years of servitude 
to the years of snow white hair and faltering step. Put 
up with coarse raiment and few dainties and the purple 
and fine linen and the luxuries for the palate will 
come in good time. He who commences life on 
luxuries often winds up life w T ith the wolf at the 
door, while he who is content with but the 
barest necessities, while he puts by each w T eek 
the dollar over his needs, will find satisfaction 
farther on. 

"John will never amount to much ! " said an old 
Scotchman once of his son. "He's got married to a poor 
young girl an' they're living on chuckie (chicken) every 
day t The time will come when they'll want a bone. 
The boy's mither an* I commenced on the bones an' now 
we hae chuckies an' to spare." 

To speak in plainer English no man has a right to 



170 SUNSHINE. 

spend all he earns, especially if he has a family 
dependent upon him. It is a tempting of fate. See 
to it that whatever betides, if money can help you 
in a dark hour of sickness or trouble, that you 
have that help laid by. The skies may be cloudless 
for many days, but the rain comes for all that, after 
a time. So prepare the way ahead of you and your 
loved that in after years sorrow and want may not be 
charged directly to your own carelessness and want 
of thrift. 

A few dollars laid away have often been the 
means of materially advancing one's interests in life. 
A neighbor, compelled to leave the country and 
needing money, offers his bit of property at a great 
sacrifice. It may be yours if you have not spent 
every dollar as fast as earned, and perhaps you 
can thus buy a property which will vastly increase in 
value. 

A young man can often get a good start in business by 
having a few dollars to invest when some friend 
desires to sell out at once, and is willing to forego 
a charge for "good will" if the stock is but taken off 
his hands. 

But aside from all this, and aside from special 
cases where a few dollars may be made available, 
the habit of saving is the one thing to which the 
mind of the young man should be directed. The 
habit once acquired will not easily be laid by, and 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS THRIFT. 171 

the boy will go to the very heights of life looking 
well to every dollar of receipts and putting each 
one where it will do the most good. Nine-tenths 
of the men who are whining around the streets 
about luck and fate being against them are spendthrifts. 
Luck and fate are unknown quantities in the common- 
sense philosophy of real life. It is these men who 
are against themselves. Had they, like the friend 
of Gaffer Green, their "thousand a year," they would 
be no better off than to-day. The money would 
be spent for every attractive article or amusement, 
while the question of service or need would never 
present itself to the noodle until in the dark days, 
surrounded by the evidences of his folly, he might 
bewail the want of sense that impelled him to such 
waste. 

In all matters of purchase or spending for any 
purpose, if one would but ask himself the question, 
"Can I get along just as well without spending 
this sum?" he would be astonished to find in how 
many cases he might save his dollars. It is a 
hard thing for the most economical of men (or women) 
to spend a five dollar bill without buying at least 
one article really unneeded. The writer does not 
believe in stinginess, misers, or in refusing one's self 
any comfort or pleasure whatever, but he does believe 
in more moderate enjoyment than that so much 
in vogue to-day, and in looking ahead and preparing 



172 SUNSHINE. 

for the future. He believes that money is an 
excellent servant, like fire, but that, like fire also, 
it is a terrible master. He would advise the young 
man to subjugate money to his will at the threshold 
of life's journey, and he will find it a willing 
slave through life; but if, at the start, the money 
leads the man, he will be led all his life and often very 
low and in darkest places. 

Saving is the secret of wealth. Let, then, all 
those who desire property and plenty in the after 
years of life, commence acquiring them now. Each 
dollar laid away is part of a million, part of house 
and grounds, horse and carriage, and all that wealth 
enjoys. Let the savings be sacred — be used for 
no purpose whatever but to increase and multiply — 
saving, of course, the needs of the "dark and 
dreary days" that into each life must fall. Wear 
your old clothes a little longer if you can not 
purchase new without attacking the savings of last 
year. Don't take that excursion if your savings 
must pay the bill. Remember they are a present 
to the old man who is to take your place 
when the young man is no more, when you sink 
your present individuality under snowy locks and 
back of an old man's glasses, and under no 
circumstances rob the old man of a dollar. If 
you can not save ten dollars this week, save one. 



ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS — THRIFT. 



173 



If you can not save one dollar, save a dime. 
If you can not save a dime, save a penny ; under any 
and all circumstances, except in actual need, save 
something each week, that the habit, once started, 
may not be broken off. So arrange your income 
that your "outgo" is beneath it and saving the 
difference, you are on the road to wealth*. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 

"N the preceding chapters to young men the writer 

has endeavored to present a few thoughts of value 

to those who are on the threshold of active life, 

peering towards the crest of life's evergreen mountains 

as if to solve the question of the future. To the boy or 

young man thoroughly in earnest it is to be hoped that 

those thoughts, added to others the reading of them 

should bring about, will be of real and lasting benefit. 

The writer has but stepped a few steps over the 

threshold and but a little nearer life's end than have 

those for whom he has written, and he consequently 

feels that his ideas will be accepted by the "boys" as 

coming almost, if not quite, from one of themselves. 

He believes firmly in "boys," and is determined to be 

one of the "boys" just as long as life lasts, joining 

with one of our sweetest poets in fervently singing 

"I'd rather laugh a brown-haired boy, 
Than rule, a white-haired king." 

These old "boys,"who are far across fifty and tripping 



TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 175 

it gaily towards sixty and seventy, singing as blithely as 
they did nearly half a century before, are the ones who 
enjoy life most after all. Those dyspeptic, sour-faced, 
bilious-looking old fellows, constantly growling about 
lame backs, rheumatic knees and disordered stomachs, 
have no more real sunshine in their lives than have the 
poor horses in the wood-saw treadmill; besides which 
they scatter their icicle-like frowns and dyspeptic words 
over and around every one who passes. There should 
be a law prohibiting men from always talking about 
their lame backs, their rheumatism and their dyspepsia, 
as if nobody else ever had such diseases anything like 
as badly as they have them. Such growlers, chronic 
growlers, if you please, can talk and grow r l the sun 
under a cloud in ten minutes on a clear day, and when 
they get to glory, if they ever do get there, ten to one 
they'll go around comparing swollen joints and measuring 
the length of their pain in the back with other old 
growlers who, like themselves, have always been so 
busy nursing themselves they never had time to commit 
a wrong grievous enough to keep them out of 
Heaven. 

The writer prefers to be one of the "boys," not only 
for to-day, when he comes very near deserving that 
title, but also in fifty years from to-day, when his hair 
is white and his face as wrinkled as that of the 
beautiful young miss (?) with a French name long 
enough to draw water with, who rides in the circus on 



176 SUNSHINE. 

the back of the fiery, untamed steed, and who has been 
doing the same identical act since the early days of the 
first venture of Barnum and Van Amburgh. Smiles are 
just as cheap as frowns, and kindly words and honest 
laughs as plentiful and as easily dispensed as groans and 
tears; besides all which, and besides the fact that they 
are worth thousands to those who receive them, they 
likewise are better than all the pills and potions in the 
world for the jolly old "boy" who always has them 
on tap. 

As one of the "boys," then, has the writer written 
these pages, and in concluding the series he earnestly 
desires to impress certain other truths upon the minds 
of his readers as helps in the battle of life. 

Be manly ; the world hates a boy who whines almost 
as much as it hates a man who whines. Meet every 
adverse wave with your face toward it and if you are 
knocked off your pins by its force, get up with a laugh. 
Don't cry if you are defeated in one of life's early 
struggles. The next w T ave may find you strong enough 
to meet its shock successfully, if you have lost no time 
and no strength in crying over the other one. Learn 
independence, and early endeavor to be able to take 
care of yourself. Never get into the habit of depending 
on father, mother, sister or brother to do for you what 
you ought to be able to do for yourself, and out in the 
busy, bustling world be your own helper in whatever 
there is to be done for yourself. If you want employ- 



TO YOUNG MEX — IN CONCLUSION. 177 

inent, don't ask father or mother to go seek it for you. 
Go into the counting-room or office and speak up like 
a man ; show your face to the man you want to employ 
you; let him hear your speech; let him see that you are 
manly enough to send out on his business and you will 
make a far better impression than though you sent 
nineteen ex-presidents, four congressmen and a county 
commissioner to intercede in your behalf. 

If you obtain employment (and these remarks have 
the same application to those already in employment) 
don't wait to be told each moment's duty ; keep your 
eyes and your ears open and a small stock of common 
sense on hand and you will easily find out a goodly per 
cent, of your duties, and when they are found out do 
them at once. Take your rests when you have nothing 
else to take. And above all things else, never get the 
idea into your head that you are the main prop of your 
employer's business. A good many older heads than 
yours, my boy, have come to grief through such ideas. 
There were boys and clerks before you were born, just as 
good ones as yourself, and when you are dead and 
buried, and somebody is keeping your grave green at so 
much per month there will be other clerks as able as 
yourself to attend to your employer's business. Let the 
man who pays your salary be the one to find out your 
worth, and when he does so do you will be raised as you 
deserve. The boy (old or young) who is constantly 
pointing himself out to his employer as eminently 



17S SUNSHINE. 

deserving of a raise, frequently gets it — out of the door. 
Take care of your employer's interests as though you 
drew a share of the profits and had your name as 
partner in seven-foot letters on the sign outside. Don't 
throw down your work when the whistle blows, if the 
work ought to be finished before leaving for the night. 
Finish the work if you do rob yourself of a few minutes 
time in doing it. Such attention is found out and 
liberally paid for sooner or later. 

Keep looking as far ahead in life as you can, without 
at the same time neglecting the duties of the hour. Be 
preparing yourself for the future while taking care of 
the day at hand. Youth is the season to lay in the 
flowers and the easy chairs for old age, and each 
endeavor should be made with such an end in view. 
Honesty to one's self and to one's employer, economy, 
thrift, good company, study, temperance and good 
humor will win fame and fortune for nine hundred and 
ninety-nine boys out of one thousand. Sitting around 
on store boxes, dodging every chance for work, bad 
whisky and worse company will make a congressman or 
an editor out of the best boy living. 

If in looking about for honest labor vou can not find 
just the kind you would most like to perform, take hold 
of whatever else presents itself. 

The tramp, begging bread one July morning of the 
farmer's w T ife, sadly bemoaned his fate because there was 
no chance of laboring at his trade and hence he was 



TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 179 

compelled to beg. The farmer's wife, asking his 
occupation, was horrified at finding he was a "shoveller 
of snow by profession, mum." And ten to one he 
couldn't do a decent job at that. The harvest fields 
were ready for the laborer, but he was a Micawber, who 
only took to work as a last resort when begging failed to 
keep his stomach supplied. 

If you cannot get a chance to teach school and to be the 
slave of every parent in the district, or a chance to part 
your hair in the middle, scent it with evergreen and lard, 
and sell calico back of a counter, go out into the field 
and bind grain, or take a saw and buck and saw wood. 
You get money of the same value as a purchasing 
medium through pursuing the latter occupation as from 
pursuing the former. The United States is covered 
seven foot deep (more or less) with dainty, dapper little 
fellows, who think clerking eminently respectable, and 
as a consequence of being unfitted by their self-education 
and their self-importance for anything else they are now 
wearing paper shirt fronts and turning their collars, 
while the man with a trade is in demand everywhere, 
save in the false society of to-day, where one such honest 
laborer is worth all who stand on the polished floor for 
the German, from Fritz Maurice D'Alencon Van 
Buskirk, who leads off and whose grandfather was a 
sutler, to Angelique Marie (accent on the ie, if you 
please) De Smythe, who dances at the extreme end 
of the set and whose father once upon a time was plain 



180 SUNSHINE. 

Bill Smith, the sheep drover, who was as hard to get 
money out of then as he is to get common sense 
out of now. 

Work, then, wherever the god of labor calls you. A 
dirty hand is never the sign manual of a dark soul. Be 
true first of all to yourself and the future will come out 
all right. In fighting your battle of life remember that 
you are of as much importance in the economy of 
physical nature as the nabob who counts his millions 
(and dodges the tax-gatherer by swearing to more 
private debts than the whole State owns). Be therefore 
brave, for fortune favors the brave toiler. If fortune 
seems afar off, work on harder than ever. It is only the 
very weak-minded and the next to useless who give up 
and settle down to chronic fault-finding and railing at 
fate. All over our land are young men doing nothing 
but sitting on dry goods boxes and salt barrels crying 
out, "hard times! " — men for whom times always will be 
hard until they themselves throw off their coats, put 
their shoulders to the wheel and themselves make times 
better. These youths have older companions, men 
of family, who are constantly agitating the great pool 
of politics to the neglect of family needs and self- 
sustenance, never working themselves to make times 
better, but earning their living by the sweat of their 
wive's brows (poor women, they have to take in washing) 
while they are spending their time demonstrating to 
other unoccupied men and boys the death of the nation 



TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 181 

unless a new party is formed instanter, and the demo- 
cratic and republican devils of principle at once driven 
out of the body politic and into the swine. Times are 
hard for such men, but there is no necessity for them 
being hard to any boy or man who is manly, honest and 
true, and ready and willing to turn his time, brain and 
muscle to account at any and at all times. 

Another word, brother, and the writer will leave you 
to your thoughts (and ten to one they are wiser than his 
have been as he jotted them down here). When your 
earnest efforts are beginning to tell and your place is 
secure and your pocket is well lined, look about for a 
companion of the opposite sex, that is if you have not 
already anticipated such advice. Man was not created 
to live alone and no ones knows it better than he does — 
though, to tell the truth, from the actions of some girls 
of our acquaintance, they seem to understand the subject 
fully, and to be ready at all times to help the poor men 
to an understanding of the dangers of loneliness. 

Look about for an honest, pleasant, companionable 
young woman, of appropriate age (never ask to see her 
teeth and count her age in that way, it isn't polite,) who 
can make her own dresses and sweep the carpet without 
missing the dust under the rug; who knows whether 
bread ought to be made in a bread bowl or a soup 
tureen, and who can make a pie that isn't two-thirds 
lard and the other third dyspepsia ; who is as neat and 
cleanly at 7 g. m. (good morning) as she is at 9 p. m. 



182 SUNSHINE. 

(papa missing) and nobody but she and yourself in the 
parlor; who can eat a square meal three times a day; 
(God help you, brother, from one of these slate pencil 
chewers and vinegar drinkers, who says it is a sign of ill 
breeding to eat over one-fourth enough for a healthy 
kitten, and w T ho in company eats an ounce and a half of 
the breast of a chicken, two crackers and a glass of float, 
and then finishes the meal when she gets home at night 
in the pantry alone, and causes seven pounds of pork and 
beans to disappear without stopping to take breath). 
Find a girl who likes children, isn't afraid of a mouse, 
and knows more about cutting and making a shirt than 
she does about boarding-school French and Algebra, and 
who can sign her name without spelling the letters, and 
who, above all, doesn't read weekly story papers, full of 
elopements, villains w T ith bad English and worse hats, 
and cruel papas and accommodating governesses, and 
who knows more about Jennie June, Emily Faithful, 
Mrs. Browning, and the making of beef tea, than she 
does about Emma D. E. N. Alphabetical South worth 
and other writers of school-girl and servant-girl novels 
at the rate of two and a half per month. If you find 
such a girl, don't worry about her religion; we'll wager 
a last year's hat that she has got more real, downright 
religion of the right kind under her dress waist and 
inside her brain cover than you and I have had since 
birth. Never mind if her father does work for wages — 
you've not to marry her father, if you can help it, nor 



TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 183 

the rest of the family (though the time doubtless will 
come when you'll want to know of your wife whether 
her mother was included in the marriage contract). 
You just make up to this blue-eyed divinity as quickly 
as you can and pop the question; if she says "yes" 
(with seven sighs and a groan), take one kiss from a yard 
to a yard and a half long, and go right straight home, 
wake up dad, mam, aunt Betsey and the hired girl and 
tell them all about it and then sleep — if you can. We'll 
bet our photograph (warranted a sure preventive of 
fevers, chills, &c.,) and a bushel of red apples you 
don't sleep an hour at a time in the next seven 
nights. 

As to popping the question itself, don't be worried 
about that. It's as easy as running for office and not 
near as liable to kill. You needn't flop down on your 
knees at all — that style went out of fashion with the 
coming of ready-made pantaloons and poorly-sewed-on 
buttons. Just keep hitching your chair closer to hers 
until you can't hitch it any hitcher, and with your left 
arm imitating the gospel (in making glad the "waist" 
places) look down into her tender blue eyes and simply 
say "wilt thou?" In nine cases out of ten she'll "wilt" 
right off. 

When you have gone this far don't let any old long- 
faced Benedict, who with his fifty years' experience 
hasn't got ten weeks' common sense, frighten you into 
waiting a dozen years to marry, until your income is :i 



184 SUNSHINE. 

couple of thousand or more. If you have plenty of love 
and five hundred dollars a year, we'll warrant you more 
of sunshine per annum than you have had in ten years 
before. Of course it is understood right here that with 
your love and five hundred dollars you have economy 
and sense. 

A true woman will help you to live within your 
income and she can buy more with seven dollars than 
you can with twelve. Let your little wife take 
possession of the week's wage as received and do all the 
buying. If at the end of the year she hasn't got some- 
thing laid up for the — ahem! — well, for the coming 
years and the children that may come with them, we've 
made a mistake in the possibilities of the true woman. 
Don't, then, keep apart for the best years of love — the 
years of youth. Marry and settle down — unless your 
debts are too many. In that case you'd better stay 
single until you settle up. Commence your new life 
free from debt, with a trustful heart for the future, full 
confidence in the little woman and a determination to do 
the right in all the duties of life, and sunshine full and 
complete will crown you and yours with its golden 
aureola of perfect content. 

A word in conclusion to the boy at work, to the young 
man as yet not looking for a companion and who is 
looking ahead for a successful future; a word about 
the spare hours of the night. Go, my brother, some 
pleasant evening into the nearest saloon. Sit down at 



TO YOUNG MEN — IN CONCLUSION. 185 

one of the tables and take a survey of the room. See 
the pictures on the walls — flagrant, sensuous, vulgar. 
Listen for a half hour to the conversation of the habitues 
of the place, full as it will be with oaths, curses, 
blasphemies, obscene stories, told by men who claim to 
doubt the purity of all women, and men who must have 
had mothers and sisters, and who, perchance, may have 
wives. (God help the wives of such men !) Take 
a good strong inhalation of the atmosphere of the room, 
impregnated as it is with the fumes of villainous cigars, 
sour beer and bad whisky. Then, brother, get out of 
the place by the shortest route practicable and go out 
into the open air; give yourself a good shake to free your 
garments from the fumes of the saloon air, and go home. 
Open the sitting room where mother and sisters 
are working, reading and talking. Look at the 
pictures around the room. "Our Lord^s Prayer," 
"Clinging to the Cross," "From Shore to Shore," "The 
Star of Bethlehem," and other equally instructive and 
moral subjects beautifully framed and tastefully hung, 
together with mottoes, worked in many-colored worsteds 
upon perforated cardboard, interspersed between the 
pictures with such helpful words, "God Bless Our 
Home," "What is Home without a Mother," "The Lord 
Will Provide," "Faith, Hope and Charity," etc. 
Listen to the conversation of the loved ones — no oaths, 
no obscenities, no tearing of reputations to tatters, but 
all is helpful and strengthening. Take a good, full 



186 SUNSHINE. 

inhalation of the purest of all airs, the holy atmosphere 
of home. The verbena and the mignonette are still on 
the window sill, the hyacinth nods above its colored glass- 
holder and the fragrance you breath in is pure as a 
foretaste of Heaven. Then, my young brother, ask 
yourself this question : Where had I better spend my 
spare hours in the evening ? In yonder saloon where all 
is impure, unholy and dangerous, or here where all is 
pure, loving and holy? May God give you strength, 
brother, to answer the question for the right — to answer 
it as one knowing that upon the answer time and eternity 
hang for weal or for woe. 




CHAPTER XVII. 

SUPPORTING THE SALOON KEEPER, 

LL over our land the cry of "hard times" is con- 
tinually going up. It comes not, however, from 
the hard-working mechanic or business man, but 
from the idler and the drinker. The curb-stone 
mechanic, who works at big fish stories and borrows 
tobacco for a living, cries "hard times;" the young man 
who believes honest labor degrading cries "hard times;" 
and the man of family, who tries to support two 
families (his own and the saloon keeper's) on wages 
sufficient for but one, cries "hard times" long and loud, 
and will cry them until he makes a change in his 
manner of life. Seventy-five cents a day, honestly 
earned and solely devoted to one's family, will keep the 
loved ones from starving at least, while with five times 
seventy-five and the saloon keeper drawing his share, 
the family will suffer. 

The writer has no enmity against the saloon keeper; 
he has no unkind words for him ; with tongue, brain 
and pen he will fight his business to his dying day, but 



188 SUNSHINE. 

the man will be treated as a brother. The saloon 
keeper is not the creator of his own hellish traffic. So 
long as men lay their dimes upon a counter and ask for 
drink some one must dispense it. As long as such 
demands are made, saloon keepers are a possibility, for 
man creates the business. When the demand ceases, the 
supply will fail. This is a law of trade that has existed 
since man was. Saloon keepers are men with home ties, 
and souls, with consciences a little calloused, it may be, 
but nevertheless God's children. It is the duty of 
temperance people not to attack the men, but to convert 
them if possible and, by weaning away their customers, 
drive them into more legitimate business. 

The drinking man, while getting no benefit in return, 
gives the saloon keeper his livelihood, his home, his 
carriage, his wealth. The dollar of the drinker laid 
upon the counter of the grocery store would fill his hands 
with packages and bundles for family needs ; the dollar 
laid upon the saloonist's bar sends the poor man home 
empty-handed, while a great need exists within the home 
circle; or if the hands are filled at all, it is with wounds 
and bruises for the patient, toiling, suffering wife and 
child. Such, with blasphemies, curses, pains and crimes 
are all that come from the dollar laid upon the counter 
of the saloon. The drinker buys rags and disgrace, 
shame and sorrow, lost reputation and business, but 
nothing he can take home to his loved ones to brighten 
their lot. And yet all over our land talented men, 



SUPPORTING THE SALOON KEEPER. 189 

skilled laborers, are devoting the best part of their time 
and talent to the support of the saloon keeper's family. 
The occasional drinker works at least a day per week 
for the saloon keeper, and that one day's labor would 
purchase many little comforts for wife and child at 
home ; while the more hardened drinker frequently 
works at least half the week and often more to support 
the "groggist" and his family in ease and luxury, taking 
home but a pitiful portion of a week's wage to the loved 
ones, hollow-eyed and heavy-hearted. The song of the 
drunkard, working for the man who helps him to 
become one, is far more pitiful than "The Song of the 
Shirt." * It is work, work, work, from morning until 
night, that one who exists on honest labor robbed of its 
compensation may laugh at the fool who supports him. 
It is the best efforts of life gone to worse than waste, for 
added to loss of time and money come loss of name, 
respect and old-time love ; for the wife if, having all the 
needs of the body, starving for the olden love, soon fails 
to give of her own boundless treasures of affection as 
freely as of yore. And so the poor blind slave of 
drink is robbing his own home of sunshine and 
scattering it plentifully around the home of the well-fed, 
contented saloonist living on the woes of his 
neighbors. 

Many a young man, starting across the threshold of 
manhood, dreaming of the home-nest he will build for a 
little woman he loves, works on year after year, 



190 SUNSHINE. 

wondering why the heart he has chosen of all other 
hearts grows so strangely chill as the months creep by ; 
wondering why the little home is no nearer to him than 
when he first started toward it, and never dreaming that 
the dollar or two he is giving the saloon keeper week 
after w r eek has been robbing him of home and wife and 
future position all the time. He cries "hard times" and 
bemoans his fate, and generally does it at the saloon bar 
with the thieving drink in his hand. And he drifts on, 
away from the little . woman, leaving her heart for all 
time aching, dull and dead, and gives, after a while, each 
week to the saloon keeper as much as would have kept 
the little woman and himself in comfort. Such ruined 
lives are filling God's fair earth, and yet men keep on 
raising the saloon keeper to wealth and sinking them- 
selves into the depths. 

The boy who dreamed, when he first went behind his 
employer's counter to clerk, of a little business of his 
own some day, gets into the drink habit and lays his 
dime upon the saloon keeper's bar hour after hour, and 
when he gets past manhood and old enough to take his 
position in mercantile life, and finds himself behind 
the same counter with bloated face and nervous hand 
and bleared eyes, he wonders why he has not gone 
higher. He has surely made money enough to have a 
business all his own. True enough, misguided brother, 
but you invested your spare dimes and dollars in 
business with the saloon keeper, and though it flourished 



SUPPORTING THE SALOON KEEPEPv. 191 

and waxed extensive the balance sheet came not to 
you each year. The profits went to the saloonist, 
and you only drew experience, sad and bitter, as 
your share. 

The poor hard-working wife, who bakes, broils, fries, 
stews, sweats, mends, scrubs, washes and breaks down 
her constitution when she ought to be in her prime, 
sees the saloon keeper's wife, dressed in rustling silks 
and bedecked with valuable jewels, pass her by with a 
sneer, and wonders why she, too, can't dress well and 
enjoy life. Poor toiler, that husband you love so w r ell 
and have to work so hard for has to dress that sneering 
woman out of his monthly wages and there is nothing 
but the barest necessities, and often not even those, left 
for you. But work on, the tired heart will find rest 
by and by, and when the last meal is cooked, the last 
motherly attention paid the little one, and the sobered 
man, who lost his greatest jewel in his mad race to 
enrich the family of another, sits beside your poor, pale 
face and goes back over all the past only to find the 
horrible deed "murder" charged upon him by his own 
awakened conscience, your spirit, freed from the sorrows 
of the heavy days, will step from cloud to cloud, from 
star to star, and find entrance into the City with streets 
of gold, and there garments that never go out of fashion 
will be yours, grander and more glorious than rustling 
silks and olden lace, the garments washed in the blood 
of Christ and waiting for you since the beginning. 



192 SUNSHINE. 

Toil on, thou pale-faced -wife. Rest sure and sweet is 
thine in the Bye-and-Bye when sunshine eternal will 
light up the dark places of thy soul. 

In the years of his slavery, the waiter, toiling day 
after day with pencil and brain to give the day's doings 
to the readers of the press, with only himself to support, 
found it impossible to do even that on one thousand 
dollars per year, because the saloon keeper's family 
demanded so much of his earnings. The man himself 
dressed in broadcloth and lit up his pathway with a 
diamond as large as a dinner plate (more or less) while 
his wife drove by in her carriage, not knowing that the 
poor, ragged, shivering scribe, who looked enviously 
at her glistening silk and jewels, had bought them one 
by one that she might enjoy all of life. And while he 
w r ent unfed for many meals the saloonist sat down to the 
best in the land and thanked God for strong drink and 
the fools to drink it. For seven years the writer thus 
worked for others, but the change came at last, and 
to-day he sits in the sunshine, surrounded by plenty, and 
is leaving the saloon keeper to take care of himself and 
to be supported by fools as yet unconverted. 

For seven years the writer lived on liver (and liver is 
mighty poor eating, by the way,) while he bought 
sirloin and porter-house for the saloonist, but now he 
proposes to feed his own loved ones on the latter if the 
saloon keeper has to live all his life on liver "with malice 
toward none and charity for all" for gravy. For seven 



SUPPORTING THE SALOON KEEPER. 193 

years he dressed the saloon keeper's wife in the best of 
fabrics, and now he proposes dressing the little woman, 
who led him into the light and made him a man again, 
in the best she wants, if the saloon keeper's wife has to 
wear old newspapers, at fifty cents per hundred, "with 
malice toward none and charity for all" to trim them 
with. 

And to the poor slave, who is wearing out brain and 
muscle to support this man, the writer asks a pause long 
enough to see the little woman at home, tired out 
with her toil and sorrows, shabbily dressed and poorly 
fed, and to compare her with the wife of the saloon 
keeper across the way. Oh, brother mine, the woman 
who reigns a disheveled queen over your lonely home 
is worth for you all the women that ever blessed 
God's country. Make yourself worthy of her. Relieve 
her of the cares and sorrows your blind support of 
another man's wife forces upon her. Give her again 
the sober, handsome man she stood with at 
the altar. Give her the old-time love her heart is 
starving for. Bring back to frightened children the 
light-hearted father of the old days, and these 
things you can do by devoting all your energies to 
their support and all your spare hours to their 
pleasure. 

The author has seen the wife of a man making fifteen 
dollars per week at his trade dressed in six yards 
of calico and working like a slave. She wanted, 



194 SUNSHINE. 

perhaps, another yard of calico to put a flounce or 
a cupola on that dress, but it couldn't be afforded, 
and in place of a brooch at the collar she had to 
pin it together with a spring clothes-pin. And yet that 
same man gave the saloon keeper from five to ten 
dollars per week with which to fill his home with 
plenty. The poor w r ife may have asked, when the 
worn-out body demanded rest, for a day's trip in 
the country, where the sunshine and the flowers and 
the birds might bring back the roses to her cheek 
(flown away to settle on her husband's nose), but the 
poor slave of the saloonist "couldn't afford it," and 
had "to go right down and see a man," and it cost 
him enough to "see that man," and other "men" like 
him, to pay for her Sabbath's trip to the country. 
The saloon keeper's wife rode out that day in a buggy 
the poor slave to drink bought for her, but not to bring 
roses into her cheeks — she had them — roses, sunflowers, 
hollyhocks and everything of the kind. And after a 
time that poor wife, because of overwork and over- 
strain upon heart and brain and body and soul, slipped 
into the other life a tired-out spirit — went to seek the 
sunshine her husband had given to others, Avhere 
sunshine would never be denied her — and all might 
have been different if only the husband had not taken a 
contract to support another's family and cry "hard 
times" while doing it. 

Poor slave of the cup, break up the partnership at 



SUPPORTING THE SALOON KEEPER. 195 

once. Leave the man who gives you drink to fight the 
battle of life himself. You fight yours honestly, 
persistently and with temperance as your shield, and thy 
days will be long and many and love shall sit self- 
crowned above thy hearthstone and the rays of sunshine 
shall never depart therefrom, but will beam as lightly in 
the hearts of thy loved ones as the god of day beams in 
the heavens of mystery above you and yours and this 
world so full of wrong lives and misguided energies 
to-day, 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 

am past saving, I fear, but for God's sake save 
the children!" These were the words of a 
poor, trembling, ragged drunkard who, full of 
doubts and fears, signed the pledge one night at a 
temperance meeting in the East. Fearing for himself 
and his class he saw ahead and spoke for the future — 
for the little ones who as yet know nothing of strong 
drink. He saw how to remove such blots as himself 
from the face of nature, by teaching the young the 
dangers of the road he had not shunned, and while men 
and women upon the platform are crying out for legal 
suasion and moral suasion, there is a work more 
important than either or both the above to be accom- 
plished in the home circles of our land. 

The children must be taught what strong drink is, 
what it does and what its following will bring to pass, 
and the lesson must come from the fireside and the 
parent's knee first of all. The little bright-eyed 
darlings of our homes and hearts are early taught every- 



PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 197 

thing included in the knowledge of father and mother 
save that most important lesson of all — strong drink and 
its terrors. How many parents, reading this chapter, 
can remember having taken the little ones on their knees 
and told them the horrors of that demon lurking in the 
wine glass? You have taught them their A, B, C's, 
their rule of three, the science of penmanship, the story 
of Christ, much, perhaps, of history, and have sent them 
to schools, day and Sabbath-schools, and to college to 
obtain a complete curriculum of knowledge, yet, at the 
same time, you have passed over entirely a duty of 
paramount importance. 

Moral and legal suasion can do wonders, but the 
early lessons of childhood can do more. If each babe 
in our land was to be taken at the first dawning of 
understanding and taught all there is to be learned 
concerning the evil of drink — have the lessons read to it, 
sang to it, preached to it, prayed to it until its school 
education was completed, we would have, when manhood 
or womanhood was reached, a generation of people so 
strongly fortified as to vanquish the enemy's every 
overture, and so firmly grounded in the faith as to be 
ready and walling to push forward every effort looking 
towards the suppression of the traffic in intoxicants. 
This done, alcohol would find no new fields to glean, its 
present victims would by that time have died in its 
clutches, or been reformed, and the world would be free 
from the blight of the monster. This, however, is not 



198 SUNSHLNE. 

done. Our boys are sent into the world unacquainted, 
comparatively, with the drink demon ; they have heard 
of it only in a roundabout fashion and they become an 
easy prey to appetite, and when they fall parents with 
aching hearts are to be found crying out in misery and 
wondering where their loved ones learned the fatal habit. 
And the want of attention in early years, the want of 
proper training when the young souls were being formed, 
will answer the question nine times out of ten. 

Our children must be taught all there is to be learned 
concerning this devil of drink, and the first lessons must 
come from those upon whom hereafter all the responsi- 
bility shall rest — the parents. But how shall these 
lessons be given? Let us see what means can be 
employed to teach our babes the dangers of strong 
drink. Let them hear the dread story of its scourges 
from infancy. Let the story of the drunkard's doom 
replace that of the fairies and the witches, with which 
fond but foolish mothers frighten their little ones until 
they are afraid of a dark room, and go through life 
nervous, timid and fearful of everything. Let temper- 
ance songs be sung in their ears. Let a plea for the 
dethronement of the monarch drink be offered with every 
prayer. Let temperance stories be read them until they 
can read themselves, and then let them have a temper- 
ance paper for their o^n reading. Take them to 
temperance meetings, let them sign the pledge and wear 
the ribbon, telling them as they grow older the meaning 



PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 199 

of both. When a drunkard passes, give them a lesson 
on his former life, compared to his present one. Tell 
the children of his sorrowing family, his lost position; 
tell them of his feelings as everything spins round him, 
and make a diagnosis of his case after the night's fitful 
sleep. Show them the next well-dressed, sober passer- 
by and compare the two men and their lives. These 
things can all be done by every parent in our land, and 
should be done through all the years of childhood. And 
now a few words on the most important lessons 
of all. 

Use no brandy for the stomachic pains of the children. 
Peppermint or paregoric is just as good. Mince pies 
can be made without brandy; and pudding sauce is never 
improved by the addition of wines or stronger liquors. 
In the making of cakes and pies the receipt for which 
calls for brandy the temperance housewife will find that 
the same quantity of strong cold coffee gives an equally 
pungent and desirable flavor. The writer is one of 
those men who delights in an occasional exploit in 
cookery and he knows whereof he speaks in making the 
above assertion. 

"I couldn't think of inviting the D's to dinner and 
not giving them wine at dessert/' said a very conscien- 
tious and religious mother of two fine boys once upon a 
time. Wine w r as something the family did not use 
themselves at table, but they feared to invite certain 
parties who were used to it without having it for them. 



200 SUNSHINE. 

Conscience bade the little woman be true to herself and 
her boys. Mrs. Grundy held up her hands in holy 
horror and insisted upon "doing the dinner np in 
style." The wine was procured and the D's had their 
fill of it, but so likewise did the husband of the little 
woman. It had been long since he had drank, but the 
appetite was only slumbering and once awakened it 
demanded more. From that time on it was always to 
be found upon the table, and though the little woman 
prayed as she had never prayed before, and pleaded and 
w r ept with her husband to go back to the old habits of 
temperance and happiness, it was all in vain, and to-day 
the little wife who made a concession to aristocracy 
and blindness, mourns a husband who died of drink, a 
son a habitual drunkard and the other in the Ohio 
Penitentiary undergoing a sentence of ten years' 
imprisonment for a murder committed while drunk. 
And the dinner with wine was the cause of it all ! 

The parent w r ho has the decanter upon the table has 
his boy's soul in his grasp. He may save it by destroy- 
ing the bottle; he may ruin it by keeping the bottle 
there. The parent who prays for a sober son has but 
one sure plan to obtain such a blessing and that is by 
giving the son a sober parent. A moderate drinking 
parent is more dangerous to a son than a drunken 
parent. The boy may become disgusted at the one; 
there is nothing to disgust him in the other. Keep 
strong drink in its every guise out of the home circle. 



PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 201 

Theodore Cuyler aptly says : "The jug that is in the cellar 
will leak in the nursery." Father may be very sly in 
taking his nip behind the door of a frosty morning, but 
John or James will find the jug or scent the breath and 
find it out after a time and his logic will at once be — 
"what is good for father can't hurt me," and all the 
stories the father may tell about the jug containing 
medicine, etc., will never change that logic of the boy, 
in the face of the flush upon the cheek, the merry, 
twinkle in the eye, and the boisterous laugh that always 
follow the dose of "that confounded bitter medicine." 
Total abstinence in the father is the key-note of total 
abstinence in the son, and the father who expects to 
raise his children to become sober, respected citizens, 
while he himself indulges either at home or abroad, has 
very little surety to rest his expectation upon. 

This topic needs so little said upon it that the writer 
gladly turns to another phase of parental responsibility, 
tending toward the welfare of the "little men and 
women" of our land. 

It is the boy who "runs the street" that soonest falls 
into bad habits, and many parents, to save themselves 
the noise and trouble of the children at home, give them 
permission to pass many of their spare hours outside the 
house. The moment a boy commences to spend his spare 
hours in the street, that moment his footsteps take hold of 
the path that leads down to Hell. 

These are strong words, but the writer knows them 



202 SUNSHINE. 

to be true — knows them to be true not only in his own 
case, but in the case of others near and dear. 

A child should not be kept at home at all hours and 
at all times, of course ; but the child who is given his 
choice of hours in the street, who is not controlled to 
any extent in this direction, and w T hose evening hours 
are spent on the public highway, is the child that is 
meant. He would not have the boys kept in from 
morning till night; far from it. But he would have 
them kept in-doors from night till morning, from supper 
time until after breakfast. The boy who spends the 
summer evenings in the street gets used to it by the 
time cold weather comes, and when the snow begins to 
fall he is weaned to a great extent from the home circle. 
But the streets are too cold; w 7 here shall he go? Yonder 
stands a door . that swings upon noiseless hinges. 
Within all is light and joyous. Music and song are 
raised upon the air. It is only a step up and a step in 
and a cozy fire and a seat at the table are free to all. 
These noisy, romping boys are wanted there. They 
soon become customers. The lads shiver outside that 
door for awhile until the oldest agrees to lead the way. 
The door opens ; the walls are lined with pictures, the 
music sounds sweeter now; the air is w T arm and inviting ; 
the door swings back to its place, and somebody's darling 
has taken his first step upon the road to ruin. A few 
more nights and some habitue of the place gives a part 
of his glass to the fair-haired boy; another night comes 



PAKENTAL BESPONSIBILITY. 203 

and the barkeeper gives him a whole glass, "just to keep 
the cold out, sonny." A few more nights and the boy 
buys for himself and imagines he is almost a man. It 
sounds simple enough, does it not, good mother? but a 
thousand graves have been dug to contain bloated bodies 
of somebody 's darlings in just such simple ways as 
these. 

"I can't keep my boy in at night," says good little 
Mrs. A, as she reads the above. 

Just a word, good mother. What do you offer him in 
return for the street ? 

"I don't understand you," says the little woman. 

The following questions may help you to a clear appre- 
hension : What do you offer your boy in return for the 
pleasure he finds in the street ? Do you compel him to 
"be seen and not heard," whenever he has a word to say or 
feels impelled to take part in the conversation ? Do you 
give him a certain chair in a certain place to sit upon and 
a copy of "Baxter's Saints Rest" to read until bedtime, 
and then send him to bed when he is as wide awake as he 
will be the next noon, and about two hours earlier than 
you go to bed yourself? Do you refuse him a cooky or an 
apple when he politely asks for it and quote from some 
mullet-headed doctor, who was born gray-headed with 
cast-iron brains, who says that anything eaten before 
going to bed is unhealthy ? 

A son who, under such treatment, wouldn't run 
off the first chance he got and try to become a 



204 SUNSHINE. 

Buffalo Bill or a circus clown, we would imagine 
had been born without brains and would commence 
to train him up for a county commissioner or a senator 
without a moment's delay. 

Young men who have been raised in just such a 
way almost invariably become gamblers, drunkards 
and thieves; or, perhaps, sour-faced, dyspeptic 
misers without one friend to the thousand square 
miles of territory; or idiots, who are indebted to 
the State laws for knowing enough to get under 
cover when it rains. A boy crushed under by 
such treatment in early years never amounts to enough 
to pay for his raising. "Baxter's Saints Rest" is a good 
book for the Hottentots, but for a growing boy who 
believes in sunshine, fun, and frolic it is about as valuable 
as the Kalends of Timbuctoo or that triumph of our 
nation's licensed spendthrifts, a patent office report. 
And the doctor who says that a person should never eat 
a bite just before bedtime may have "Professor" in 
front of his name and D. D. fiddle-de-dee after it, but 
he shouldn't doctor us for a case of the seven-year itch 
if he did it for nothing and was the only doctor this side 
of Heaven. 

If the stomach cries out for a bite before bedtime or 
after, it's a sure sign it needs that bite, just as the 
decrease on the face of the steam-gauge indicates that 
the boiler desires more feed. And when the stomach 
of your boy cries out for its bite between meals or at bed- 



PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 205 

time if the cupboard has enough to supply the demand, 
the demand should be supplied and a good night's rest will 
be the result. A hungry stomach will keep man or boy 
awake all night. Of course by a "bite" a square meal 
of pickles, lobsters, cold flap-jacks and currant jam is not 
meant. 

Keep a boy from taking part in the family conver- 
sation and he grows up timid, bashful and indigent in 
expression. Miserable in society himself, he is the cause 
of misery in others. Take the boy into the family 
council; let him have his say occasionally, even if his 
suggestions are never acted upon. Such a course will 
teach him independence of thought, freedom of expres- 
sion and conversational ease. Let him, further, sit 
where he pleases and go to bed when the rest do, if he 
doesn't grow tired before. 

As to literature, if you have got a copy of Baxter in 
the house give it to the cook or your next door neighbor. 
Don't furnish your boy with a volume as dry as an 
agricultural society meeting and as prosy as a last 
century parson stumbling through his "twentieth" with 
his whole congregation asleep and his own brain a 
thousand miles away. Let him, after lessons are over, 
read Jules Verne, J. S. C. Abbott, Tom Brown, and 
books of history — history written for young boys, like 
Abbott's series and Dickens' England— or of romance, 
romance with life and incident mingled with good 
English and pure tone. Save religious theses and moral 



206 SUNSHINE. 

essays for his later years. Let him read Samuel Smiles' 
works on Self Help, Thrift, and the rest of the same 
series, and see to it that the boy has a weekly paper or 
monthly magazine to his liking. 

And right here we desire to say a word about 
literature for the young. Let no parent give into the 
hands of boy or girl a single book or paper, the contents 
of which are not familiar to the parent and known to be 
pure and helpful in tone. Eastern publishers, 
grown rich in the traffic, print tons every year 
of so-called weekly journals for boys and girls, young 
men and young ladies, with flashy pictures and worse 
stories, and which are as dangerous to our boys and girls 
as strong drink itself. These papers are filled with tales 
and stories of vice victorious and virtue defeated, 
runaway boys who became eminent as Indian fighters 
and stage robbers, girls who step from a supposed 
unhappy home in a single step to the heights of the 
dramatic profession; and hundreds of lost children, 
criminal boys, and girls sunk in infamy are the result 
of such reading each year. The parent who allows such 
trash in his or her house, and above all the parent who 
reads the papers of like ilk, are criminally' guilty of 
providing the means for the downfall of their young. 
The church member who sells such papers and the 
yellow-backed novel literature of the day over his 
counter to boys and girls should be brought before his 
church as a disseminator of vice. The laws of our land 



PARENTAL, RESPONSIBILITY. 207 

look after lame horses and feeble cattle, but they allow 
these nauseous doses of mental pabulum to be openly 
sold to our children without a word of remonstrance. 

Thank God that this is an era of cheap literature! 
Any work of Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, George 
Eliot, Dinah Muloch, and a hundred other great 
writers can be purchased for ten cents; and the success 
of the illegitimate, sinful novels and papers would be a 
wonder to those who have never read them and found 
out how attractively they pander to the worst elements of 
the nature of our children, while at the same time they 
constantly hold themselves and their vile sheets up to 
the young as models in life and means to respectability 
and eminence. We have read of political mobs 
"sacking" newspaper offices and throwing types and 
presses into rivers and lakes. Would to God such a 
gathering of Christian fathers and mothers would rise 
in the great city of New York and destroy the giant 
machinery and the many types made the instruments of so 
much sorrow and crime by the soulless publishers who 
control them. The writer might be a thousand miles 
away when such a thing took place, but no one in all the 
land would sing "Praise God from whom all blessings 
flow" any louder, and more quickly contribute of his 
mite to the defense of the brave spirits who would essay 
such a task. When laws are powerless and homes and 
hearts and souls are being ruined by thousands, Judge 



208 SUNSHINE. 

Lynch would be an eminently respectable advocate and 
chief justice. 

The great secret, then, of keeping the boys off the 
streets is in making home the happiest spot on earth, 
a veritable city of refuge where all cares and sorrows 
can be laid aside and the growing boy may pass the 
hours as best pleases his fancy without ever discovering 
or imagining the fact that he is "in the road" of father, 
mother or older brothers and sisters. There are few 
boys who ever go astray from such a home. 

We have heard the boys laugh long and loud as they 
told of some companion "tied to his mother's apron 
string," but we have always had, and ever expect 
to have, a deep, real love and respect for such a boy. 
Given a lad thus tied, we will show a boy who is 
honest, kindly and compassionate, one who will go a 
mile out of his way to oblige a friend, one who is useful 
in a sick chamber and a gentleman everywhere. He is 
a boy who never forgets reverence to his elders or 
politeness to all with whom he comes in contact. His 
mother has but to speak and she is obeyed. She don't 
have to stand on the doorstep calling "Wilyurn ! Wil- 
yum-m-m ! " until she is as red in the face as the cook 
surprised in the act of giving her "cousin" the remains 
of the evening meal in the kitchen at nine o'clock. If 
we were of the opposite sex, and not anchored for life 
alongside of a good companion, we'd hunt up a boy 
who had been always "tied to his mother's apron string," 



PARENTAL, RESPONSIBILITY. 209 

and thus get for a companion a veritable Bayard. This 
hint is thrown in for the benefit of young ladies, without 
extra charge. 

The boy who is anchored close to his mother's heart is 
a million miles away from the allurements of the devil 
of drink. The home that is so full of sunshine and 
happiness that no other place on God's earth has half its 
attractions is a home across the threshold of which 
strong drink never comes. If you want your boy 
always safe, make home happy. Let him run through 
every room with his noise and his glee. Let no room 
in your house be too good for your own loved ones and 
only good enough for company. There are homes 
where the most attractive room of all, best bed-room or 
parlor full of pictures and books, is never opened from 
one year's end to the other, save for visitors. The doors 
and blinds are constantly closed lest God's air and 
sunshine fade the curtains and the carpets, when curtains 
of lace can be bought for ninety-nine cents per pair and 
carpets at forty cents per yard, but the happiness of a 
boy is beyond all price. Turn the key in the lock of a 
certain room and tell the boy never to go into it and 
that boy will be miserable. It is human nature to want 
forbidden fruit. Poor Eve might have lived in the 
Garden for a million years and never tasted an apple had 
it not been forbidden her. The boy will hang around 
that forbidden Blue Beard room and fret and fume and 
worry and grow cross and sullen, and all because the 



210 SUNSHINE. 

room is too good for him — fitted only for "company." 
Thank God there is no room in the little home of the 
author that is denied his boy? He may go singing and 
shouting wherever he will. Better a headache to-day 
than a continual heartache by and by, when the boy, 
tired of being crushed down at home, finds the street 
and the grog shop more pleasant. We have had 
experiences w r ith the Blue Beard rooms, of "the best 
bed-chamber," (never opened from January to December 
to air, save when the temperance lecturer or the 
minister stops over night, and is forced between 
sheets of ice in that airless, sunless room, with the smell 
of mold on everything, and an atmosphere like a 
refrigerator,) and would get up with the bronchitis 
every time. 

Let every door of home and heart be open to the 
children. Furnish them games, books, papers and 
companionship, and when the last of earth shall come 
for you, good mother, it may be that that grandest of all 
epitaphs shall be inscribed by loving hearts upon your 
tombstone — hearts that have never gone astray because 
you made every hour so full of sunshine for them: 

I : 

Sacred to the memory of 

OUR MOTHER. 

She always made home happy. 



We have read the epitaph of a Napoleon, an Eliz- 
abeth, a Cromwell, a Dickens, a Washington, and a 



PAEENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 211 

Douglas, but the epitaph above, from a moss-covered 
tombstone in an almost forgotten Virginia cemetery, is 
grander than all the epitaphs conceived by love or 
reverence or respect for the heroes, the rulers and the 
giant intellects of the world. 

Guide the little ones right, good parent. Keep them, 
always next your heart. Hang pictures on the walls of 
the rooms of your hearts which shall keep the boys and 
girls constantly studying them, and then shall your 
apartments in the mansions not made with hands be 
grand and bright and glorious when you leave behind 
this earth, with its clouds and its sunshine, its thorns 
and its flowers, and enter upon the fullness of the joys 
of your Lord. 

"the children in the nest." 



"Gather them close to your loving heart, 

Cradle them on your breast, 

They will soon enough leave your brooding care, 
Soon enough mount youth's topmost stair, 

Little ones in your nest. 

"Fret not that the children's hearts are gay, 
That the restless feet will run, 

There may come a time in the by-and-by, 
When you'll sit in your lonely room and sigh, 
For a sound of childish fun. 

"There may come a time when you'll long to hear 
The eager, boyish tread, 

The tuneless whistle, the clear, shrill shout, 
The busy bustling in and out, 
And the pattering overhead. 



212 SUNSHINE. 

"When the boys and girls are all grown up, 

Or scattered far and wide, 

Or gone to that beautiful, golden shore, 
Where sickness and death come nevermore, 

You will miss them from your side. 

"Then gather them close to your loving heart, 

Cradle them on your breast, 

They will soon enough leave your brooding care, 
Soon enough mount youth's topmost stair, 

little ones in your nest." 




CHAPTER XIX. 

DOMESTIC LIFE. 

ERETOFORE we have asserted that the only 
sure way of having a boy grow up into sober 
moral manhood is by setting him the right kind 
of an example in the home circle. A drinking father is 
a perilous guide for a growing son ; especially so the 
father who is only (as yet) a moderate drinker. He may 
prate long and tearfully to his son about the dangers of 
drink, but unless he himself shall abstain his words 
will have but little weight. 

Said an aged father to his inebriated son, in the 
hearing of the author, one bright Sabbath morning, in 
an Ohio city : "Charlie, if you don't go home this 
instant and go to bed, you need never cross my threshold 
again. Fve done everything in the world to make a 
sober man out of you, but you will drink. Fve 
supported you and your family, started you in business, 
supplied you with money, but all to no avail — you are 
a common drunkard. " 

This attack sobered the son for a moment and 



214 SUNSHINE. 

turning with flashing eyes upon Lis gray-haired parent, 
he cried out: 

"Yes, father, I will admit that you have done all these 
things to make me a sober man, but, father, you have 
never kept sober yourself/" 

And it was the truth. Two months later the father 
died of strong drink, and his only legacy to a county 
that had elevated him time and again to the highest 
political position in its gift is a son of thirty years fast 
drifting down the street of Hell to a drunkard's 
doom. And yet fathers imagine their words will undo 
their acts and their teaching will keep the boys on the 
right road. 

A certain father, who believed that temperance was a 
good thing for his boys, while he himself might indulge 
as he pleased, and who took his bourbon straight behind 
the door morning, noon and night, came home from a 
temperance meeting on one occasion and, calling his 
three boys in front of him, said: "Now look here, Will, 
(aged twenty) you take a little beer once in a Avhile. 
It's a dangerous thing. You go down to the meeting 
to-morrow night and sign the pledge and I'll give you a 
good calf to do as you please with." 

The same offer was made to Tom, aged eighteen, and 
then Eddie, a bright-eyed boy of seven, sharp as a 
politician and as full of mischief, was offered a calf to 
sign the pledge, likewise, but, looking up with a comical 
leer, he said to his parent: 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 215 

"I say, dad, don't you think you had better go down 
to the meeting to-morrow night, and sign the pledge 
yourself and take a cow ? " 

The boy was right. Let the example be set by the 
head of the house and then all will be well. 

Leaving this phase of domestic temperance the author 
desires to direct the attention of his readers to another 
branch of the subject. He has attacked strong drink on 
the side-board, in the pantry, on the medicine shelf and 
in cakes and mince pies. He has written for the benefit 
of parents, and wants to add a few words for the benefit 
of wives afflicted with drinking husbands. 

How many heavy hearts can be found to-day all over 
our land caused by the club and the billiard room 
robbing the wife of the husband's society ? How many 
wives sit wearily counting the hours waiting for the 
footsteps staggering up the walk? But do you know, 
good wife, that sometimes you must begin the reform 
you are praying for so earnestly? 

"I begin it?" cries the sorrowing woman. "What 
have I to do with my husband's drinking?" 

A great deal, perhaps. Have you offered the husband 
everything in your power that would tend to make home 
attractive during the evening hours? When he comes 
home, tired out with his day's labor, does he find a half- 
cooked meal, presided over by a wife in a dirty calico 
dress, collarless and ribbonless, with her hair standing 
out forty ways for Sunday, the sitting room unswept and 



216 SUNSHINE. 

covered with litter, and above all a complaining frown 
on the face where love should sit self-crowned and 
glorified? If your good man comes home to such 
sights, is it any wonder that he takes his hat and 
starts down town "to see a man" as soon as supper is 
over ? 

If there is anything on earth the average man dislikes 
it is a poorly-cooked meal and an untidy wife. The 
writer knows full well the burden borne by the wives of 
to-day. He knows the labor they have to perform from 
Monday morning till Saturday night, but he likewise 
feels that that labor, systematically performed, with a 
song on the lip and a smile on the face, will not seem 
half so hard, and that the hours of sunshine in the 
evening with husband and child, although they cost a 
few moments' extra labor, will drive off all the cares and 
aches of the day. 

When John comes home from store, or shop, or office 
for the evening meal, if he finds Mary at the back fence 
talking gossip with her neighbor while her beefsteak 
and potatoes are frying to a crisp, the frown he brought 
home with him will stay on his face ; but if Mary is at 
the door in a clean wrapper or dress, her face bright and 
shining with welcome, the room tidy and neat, the 
supper smelling savory and appetizing on the hearth, 
the table set with clean cloth and bright tableware, 
we'll wager a political majority that the frown caused by 
business cares will speedily fly into the land of forgetful- 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 217 

ness and John and Mary will pass as pleasant an evening 
as they did five or ten years before in her father's 
parlor. 

Many a poor wife, crying out that she can't reach 
her husband's heart as she used to, would look 
amazed if asked had she ever tried to reach the good 
man's heart through his stomach. It is not a flattering 
thought to be sure, but the heart of the average man can 
be reached through the stomach swifter than by any 
other way. Let the wife take a little extra trouble with 
beefsteak, coffee and biscuits, and prepare the evening 
meal, of all others, with extra care, and with neatness 
and smiles added to good meals the husband can quickly 
be won from club or saloon. 

Furthermore, let the wife be ready for an evening 
stroll whenever the husband wants to take one. If she 
finds an excuse for stopping at home when he w r ants to 
stretch his limbs a bit, he will leave the house without a 
guide and ten to one drop into a saloon ere he returns. 
He could not do so if Mary had dropped her sewing, put 
baby into the hands of the girl, wrapped herself up and 
gone with him, pleasantly chattering to him as she used 
to when they walked home. from church back of the old 
folks in the years of courtship. 

The shiftlessness and the frowns of wives have been 
the rocks upon which many a matrimonial ship has been 
wrecked. Let the wife, then, do her best with meals, 
dress, smiles and song, and if these don't win the 



218 SUNSHINE. 

husband from the wrong path he must be a hard 
case indeed. 

Yet there are men who are insensible to all the sun- 
shine of the little woman's heart; men who did not 
marry for home pleasure, but, perhaps, because it was 
fashionable to double up; men who are great overgrown 
brutes and who ought to have been born bears. Such 
men can't be reached by love or beefsteak, and to the 
poor w T ife who has tried everything to win smiles and 
promised love in vain, we advise cowhides and 
divorce as the last means to the desired end. God pity 
the wives whose tender hearts are given into the 
keeping of such men ! Their icy faces and cold hearts 
have murdered the sunshine of many a golden day, and 
many a poor woman, sinking into the grave with what 
the doctors called a complication of diseases they could 
not fathom, died solely by starvation — starved to death 
for the love that was promised and never given. God 
knows why He created such men, no one else 
does. 

The happy home is the waiting room on earth for the 
journey to Heaven. Marriage opens the door and 
prepares the room for our coming. When the one man 
and the one woman of all the countless thousands on 
God's earth start hand in hand for the perfected journey 
the angels above them join hands and sing gladsome 
strains of sweetest music. 

The Bible tells us "that after man comes woman/' 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 219 

and, to tell the truth, she's been after him ever since, and 
for one the writer is glad that she ever caught up with 
him. He looks upon years spent alone, after discretion 
comes, as years wasted, believing that each and every 
man has the power to make some woman happy if he 
but wills to do it. The fireside is a kingdom, over 
which, when love presides as the king, there can come 
nothing but sweet hours and fragrant memories as the 
hours pass into time that was. If true love, self- 
glorified, sits over the hearthstone, the partner of our 
joys and cares, though the snow of age rests over the 
once smooth brow, grows never old. True love never 
changes, and age is never included in the reckoning of 
its hours. Shakespeare has told the story in a line: 
"Although Time with his sickle can rob ruby lips and 
sparkling eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he cannot 
quiet touch love, that reaches even to the end of the 
tomb." 

There never yet was man so good that the love of a 
woman did not make him better still. The fame and 
riches a world can give can not outweigh the value of a 
true heart. Napoleon, marching through seas of blood 
to a throne, pushed beyond his sight the only heart that 
was ever true to him, and he who through ambition 
would make a loving heart a stepping stone to political 
distinction deserved a worse fate than the "Little 
Corporal" suffered. 

If, out of the boundless treasures of the world, God 



220 SUNSHINE. 

has given you a helpmeet for your very own, consider 
her as the apple of your eye, a gift as priceless as Heaven 
itself. 

Spare her every effort that you can make as well as 
she. Let her rule the home as you may rule the 
counting room or the store. Don't set yourself up as 
the "boss" of the house. A man who is "boss" of a 
home is always a coward among men. A mean, 
sniveling, sour-faced fellow, who cringes before every 
man he does business with, and who dares not call his 
soul his own when among his male associates, is the only 
man of all the sex who is "boss" at home. As he can't 
rule men, he rules a w r eak woman with a rod of iron, and 
by and by begins to wonder why the poor woman is not 
as affectionate as before. Such men ought to be loved 
and kissed aud hugged — to death. They murder the 
happiness that should reign in a wife's heart forever and 
for aye. 

The man who makes his wife a slave soon receives 
from her only the offerings of a slave. She does his 
washing, mending and cooking, just as a hired servant 
might do and she never cuddles any nearer to her 
master's heart than the colored girl he can hire for two 
dollars a week would do. She fears him while she 
despises him. I would rather be a rustic, living in a 
log hut, with the branches of the trees singing dirges 
round it all the night as the wind sought passage through 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 221 

them, with a pine table covered with tin dishes 
containing only bacon and bread, and sit at my meals 
opposite the woman I chose from all the world as mine 
and mine alone, and make up to her in love what she 
lacked in luxuries, and thus in poverty treat her as 
royally as a king could do, than to be a king upon his 
throne, and while surrounding a Josephine with the 
w T ealth of nations close the door of my heart upon her 
and make her poorer than the lowliest servant girl in all 
the land. And a woman unloved is poverty-stricken 
though she count her millions by tens, for love out- 
weighs the gems of Golconda and the gold of 
worlds. 

Treat your wife and the mother of your children not 
as though she were a hired companion, but as one as high 
in command as yourself. You may be general in 
command of the home forces, but let your wife be 
general, too. Never commence as second lieutenant 
when you get married. Many men, through their 
great love, have done so, but the author has never known 
one who got promoted afterwards. A man who cringes 
to his wife and lowers himself before her will soon find 
himself "second fiddle" and low in tone besides. But 
don't raise yourself higher than you raise your 
companion. 

Divide with her all the labors you can. If the fire 
wants fixing, fix it yourself. Hunt up your own pipe 
and bring up the apples from the cellar without troubling 



222 SUNSHINE. 

your wife to go up and down the steps. She has, 
perhaps, gone up them fifty times since you left the house 
in the morning. 

Two Irishmen, traveling on foot toward Cincinnati, 
came across a milestone giving the distance to their 
destination as forty miles. 

"Cheer up, Teddy," says Mike, "it's only twenty 
miles apiece for us. We'll soon be there." 

Halve all the labor of the home that you can halve 
with the little woman who should be your queen as 
readily as the Irishman did the miles, and every step 
saved the wife will tend to make your rest the 
sweeter. 

Give your wife a man she can respect as her life 
companion, and no pure woman can respect a drunkard 
or a moderate drinker. The breath of the average man, 
though he never tasted strong drink, is seldom ambrosial, 
but when it is perfumed w T ith whisky and beer, it is 
simply nauseous, and the woman who has to bear the 
exhalation of that breath as she sits beside the manu- 
facturer of it simply suffers torture. Keep your 
stomach, your breath and your life pure. Devote every 
hour of labor to surrounding wife and children with 
comforts, and this you can do best by devoting no hour 
to the support of the saloon keeper. Let strong drink, 
evil companions, billiard and club rooms, saloons and 
places of evil repute alone ; be a family man in all that 
the word implies and the years of your life will be as the 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 223 

rain drops of a summer shower, filled with sunshine 
until they sparkle with glee. 

Don't be stingy. A stingy man is meaner than a 
black snake and not half so deserving of kind words. 
A man whose wife has to commence begging the first of 
March when she wants a half dollar to use in July is a 
man who ought to be imprisoned for life with his 
pockets filled with gold and no way of spending a 
cent. 

If you've got but one dollar in the world, let the wife 
have ninety-five cents of it, and ten to one she'll do 
more with that ninety-five than you would with its 
double. Never let your wife ask in vain for what money 
she wants if you can spare it by any kind of a sacrifice. 
If it is a sacrifice to you, let her know it kindly, and if 
she can get along without it she will be glad to give 
way. Bob Ingersoll said in a recent lecture, and he 
deserves honor for the expression : 

"Do you know I have known men who would trust 
their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not 
with their pocketbook; not with a dollar? 'When I see 
a man of that kind I always think he knows which of 
the articles is the most valuable. Think of making 
your wife a beggar. Think of her having to ask you 
every day for a dollar. 'What did you do with that 
dollar I gave you last Christmas?' What kind of 
children do you expect to have with a beggar and a 
coward for their mother? Oh, I tell you, if you have 



224 SUNSHINE. 

but a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, 
spend it like a king; spend it as though it were a dry 
leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests. I had 
rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a 
king than be a king and spend my money like a 
beggar/' 

If the wife and mother asks you to hold the baby for 
a few moments while she tidies up the room, don't 
commence telling her you are too tired and that the 
baby is too heavy for you. She has carried it about all 
day, perhaps, as it fretted about its new teeth that 
didn't quite seem to fit it, and her lifting power isn't 
equal to yours by perhaps three hundred per cent. 
We have never found a mother yet who was too tired to 
hold her baby, but we have found whole droves of two- 
legged hogs who pleaded weakness and fatigue when 
James Henry Augustus had to leave mother's arms to 
enable her to attend to other work, and yet these same 
poor, weak hogs, a couple of years before, sat on a split- 
bottom chair and held that same baby's mother in their 
lap until thVee o'clock in the morning and rather liked 
it than otherwise. 

If you have long years been married, if the 
suggestions of this chapter are not already in use, adopt 
them at once, and if, perchance, you are just starting 
over the road of dual life, good brother and sister, 
make the little home you are founding the happiest spot 
on earth. Self-sacrifice, sobriety, mutual forbearance, 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 225 

helpful hands and trusting hearts are all that are needed. 
These given, a home is the result where sunshine and 
contentment may always be found. And if there comes 
a time when one must solve the mystery of the beyond, 
to the one left behind the memory of the hours of early 
married life in the lowly cottage, when all the world was 
before you, will outweigh in value the crown jewels of a 
realm. Or, if the world shall call you higher, brother 
and sister, into wealth and fame, no memories of life 
will be sweeter than the early hours when hand in hand 
you commenced the journey up the evergreen mountain 
of life. 

To show how happy a home can be builded when 
true love lays the foundation stones, the author adds to 
the chapter the story of a man whose name is world- 
wide, as given some time since in the columns of an 
Eastern paper : 

"Not long since I met a gallant gentleman who is 
assessed for more than a million. Silver was in his hair, 
care upon his brow, and he stooped beneath his 
burden of wealth. We were speaking of that period 
of life when we had realized the most perfect enjoyment, 
or, rather, when we found the happiness nearest to be 
unalloyed. 'I tell you/ said the millionaire, 'when 
was the happiest hour of my life. At the age of one- 
and-twenty, I had saved up eight hundred dollars. I 
was earning five hundred a year, and my father did not 
take it from me, only requiring that I should pay for my 



226 SUNSHINE. 

board. At the age of twenty-two I had secured a pretty 
cottage just outside the city. I was able to pay two- 
thirds of the money down, and also to furnish it 
respectably. I was married on Sunday — a Sunday in 
June — at my father's house. My wife had come to me 
poor in purse, but rich in the wealth of womanhood. 
The Sabbath and the Sabbath night we passed beneath 
my father's roof, and on Monday morning I went to my 
work, leaving my mother and my sister to help in 
preparing my home. On Monday evening, when the 
labors of the day were done, I went not to the parental 
shelter, as in the past, but to my own home. The holy 
atmosphere of that hour seems to surround me even now 
in my memory. I opened the door of my cottage and 
entered. I laid my hat upon the little stand in the hall, 
and passed on to the kitchen — our kitchen and dining 
room were all one then. I pushed open the kitchen 
door and was— in heaven. The table was set against 
the w r all — the evening meal was ready — prepared by the 
hands of her who had come to be my helpmate in deed as 
well as in name — and by the table, with a throbbing 
expectant look upon her lovely and loving face, stood 
my wife. I tried to speak and could not. I could only 
clasp the waiting angel to my bosom, thus showing to 
her the ecstatic burden of my heart.' 

"'The years have passed — -long, long years — and 
worldly wealth has flowed in upon me, and I am honored 
and invited; but, as true as heaven, I would give it all, 



DOMESTIC LIFE. 227 

every dollar, for the joy of the hour of that June evening 
in the long, long ago ! ? " 

Such homes are only founded by loving hearts and 
true, and every home to-day, blackened by sorrow, 
containing hearts that are heavy laden through faults 
upon the one side or the other, can be changed in the 
twinkling of an eye to become the abode of peace and 
goodness, when each shall forgive and forget, and, 
bending down, take up the snarl of life's thread and 
unwinding its tangles start once again with forbearance 
and trust as guides toward the heights. Let husband 
and wife each do all that one man and one woman can 
do and soon the light of content will again pierce the 
shaded window and the angel of love sit over the hearth- 
stone glorifying the home and its dwellers. Make home 
happy. Therein lies life's greatest blessing this side 
that other life, of which this is only the preparatory- 
department. 




CHAPTER XX. 
woman's eight to the ballot. 

1 HALL women have the right to defend and pro- 
tect their loved ones? is a question asked over and 
over again, the ignorance of the nation and the 
party dominant for the time being answering the question 
negatively. Let that party feel a coming defeat in its 
bones and it begins wondering whether, after all, woman 
suffrage wouldn't save the country, provided that a 
soothing plank be put in their own party platform 
before the women had the privilege of casting their first 
ballot. 

A party needing recruits favors women suffrage, while 
the man who hasn't sense enough to tell a franchise from 
a toad-stool opposes it. Men of heart, soul and honor, 
who recognize the strength of woman's love and 
devotion, bid her God-speed in her efforts to get the 
power to protect her home and her loved ones. 

Woman is the only one of God's creation that can not 
defend her young. The eagle has strength to combat 
the pirates of the upper world seeking her young ; the 



woman's- eight to the ballot. 229 

lioness has power sufficient to vanquish the gorilla that 
seeks her cubs; the mother hen can spread her wings 
over all her brood when the circling hawk swoops 
down; all God's creatures have strength and cunning to 
save their young, but that creation which sits upon the 
very apex of God's handiwork — woman — above man 
himself in all that makes man noble, only below 
him in whatsoever man himself can control. 

The saloon on the street corner reaches out and makes 
a fair-haired boy drunk ; the father fears to say a word 
lest the saloon keeper withdraw his mighty influence 
from Fourth Ward politics, and the mother sits in agony 
nursing a wounded heart, while every nerve of her 
being cries out against the licensed murderer who killed 
the sunshine of her life. Man refuses her the right to 
save that fair-haired boy, the while he himself does not 
interfere in the matter lest his party reprimand him. 
It is by no means flattering to the manhood of America 
when one remembers the fact that father love is thus 
sunken in the great pool of politics, and the child is 
forgotten — the child and its needs— in the demands of 
party leaders. 

Give the American mother the right to save her boy 
and, though to do so she has to stand upon the ruins of 
all the political parties the world has ever seen, like 
another Nero at Rome's downfall, there will the mother 
be found with her saved boys nestled against her 
heart. 



230 SUNSHINE. 

The great mass of American women do not ask 
equal political rights with man. It is to them a matter 
of little import who is elected constable or city clerk — 
whether such officers come out of the ranks of the 
republican or the democratic or any other party. But 
they do ask the right to vote at all elections which have 
to do w T ith the welfare of their children — the right to 
vote on all measures concerning strong drink and 
education. 

There are many objections to womau's right to vote, 
but it seems to the writer that all have been more than 
answered by Miss Francis Willard, of Illinois, in her 
Home Protection Manual, from which the following 
thoughts are taken : 

"would women vote right?" 

" Yet a few men and women, densely ignorant about 
this movement, have been heard to say : 'Who knows 
that women would vote right?' I confess that nothing 
has more deeply grieved me than this question from the 
lips of Christian people. Have distillers, brewers, and 
saloon keepers, then, more confidence in woman's sense 
and goodness than she has herself? They have a very 
practical method of exhibiting their faith. They declare 
war to the knife and the knife to the hilt against the 
Home Protection Movement. By secret circulars, by 
lobbyists and attorneys, by the ridicule of their news- 
paper organs, and threats of personal violence to such 



woman's right to the ballot. 231 

women of their families as sign our petition, they display 
their confidence in womankind. 

The only town in Illinois which sent up a delegation 
of citizens openly to oppose our petition was Belleville, 
with its heavy liquor interest and ten thousand German 
to three thousand American inhabitants; and among 
our two hundred and four legislators there were no other 
dozen men whose annoyance of the Home Protection 
Committee was so persistent and so petty as that of the 
senator who openly declared he was there to defend the 
vested interests of his Peoria constituents, who in 1878 
produced eight million dollars' worth (?) of ardent 
spirits. Nay, verily, woman's vote is the way out of 
our misery and shame, 'our enemies themselves being 
judges'; and none see this so clearly as the liquor dealers, 
whose alligator eye is their pocket-book, and the 
politicians, whose Achilles heel is their ambition. The 
women of the crusade must come once more to judgment 
— not, as aforetime, with trembling lip and tearful eye; 
but reaching devout hands to grasp the weapon of power 
and crying with reverent voice: 'The sword of the Lord 
and Gideon !' 



"But, after all, 'seeing' is a large part of 'believing' 
with this square-headed Yankee nation ; so let us seek 
the testimony of experience. 

"In Kansas the law provides that the signatures of 



232 SUNSHINE. 

women shall be requisite to a petition asking for a dram- 
shop before that boon shall be conferred upon any given 
community. This arrangement wrought such mischief 
with the liquor dealers that they secured an amendment 
exempting large towns from such bondage. But in 
small towns and villages it has greatly interfered with 
the traffic, and has so educated public sentiment that 
prohibition can— with impunity! — -form the theme of a 
governor's inaugural, and Kansas is on the war-path 
for a law hardly less stringent than that of Maine. 

"In Des Moines, Iowa, a few weeks since, as a test of 
popular opinion, the women voted on the license 
question ; twelve declaring in favor of saloons and eight 
hundred against them. In Newton, Iowa, at an election 
ordered by the council, one hundred and seventy-two men 
voted for license to three hundred and nineteen against 
— not two to one against it; while the women's vote stood 
one in favor to three hundred and ninety-four against 
licensing saloons. In Kirkville, Missouri, ten women 
favored the liquor traffic, twenty declined to declare 
themselves, and five hundred wanted 'no license/ In 
our Illinois campaign, which resulted in ninety-five 
thousand names of women who expressed their wish to 
vote against saloons, not one woman in ten declined to 
affix her name to our petition. 

"THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, GERMANS, ETC." 

"The attitude of the Catholic Church was friendly to 



woman's eight to the ballot. 233 

our petition, many priests urging their people to sign. 
Irish women, as a rule, gave us their names, and saloon 
keepers' wives often secretly did so. Scandinavians were 
generally enthusiastic for the petition. Germans opposed 
us; but the reply of one of them indicates the chivalric 
nature which will come to our aid when our invincible 
argument against beer shall be brought in contact with 
German brain and German conscience. He said : 'If it 
is not the pledge, I will sign it. I cannot give up my 
beer; but I want to help the ladies.' To be sure, German 
saloon keepers were universally and bitterly antagonistic, 
and had much to say aljout 'women keeping inside their 
proper sphere.' 



"But the convictions which supply me with unalter- 
able courage and unflagging enthusiasm in the Home 
Protection work are not based upon any proof I have 
yet given. No argument is impregnable unless founded 
on the nature of things. 

"The deepest instincts and the dearest interests of 
those who have the power to enact a law must be 
enlisted for its enforcement before it will achieve 
success. For instance, the Fifteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States is going to be enforced 
by the ballots of colored men who once were slaves, just 
so long as those men retain their reason and their color. 
By parity of reasoning, if you can enlist in favor of a 



234 SUNSHINE. 

local option or prohibition law the dearest interests of a 
class in the community which in all the ages of wine and 
beer and brandy drinking has not developed (as a class) 
the appetite for them nor formed the habit of their use, 
you will have something trustworthy on which to base 
your law. We temperance people have looked over at 
the rum power very much as the soldiers of Israel did at 
Goliath of Gath. We have said: 'He has upon his side 
two of the most deeply-rooted instincts of human nature 
— in the dealer the appetite for gain, and in the drinker 
the appetite for stimulants — and we have nothing 
adequate to match against this frightful pair/ 

"But, looking deeper, w r e perceive that, as God has 
provided in Nature an antidote for every poison, and in 
the kingdom of his grace a compensation for every loss, 
so in human society he has ordained against King 
Alcohol, that worst foe of the social state, an enemy 
beneath whose blows he is to bite the dust. Take the 
instinct of self-protection (and there is none more deeply 
seated): What will be its action in woman when the 
question comes up of licensing the sale of a stimulant 
which nerves with dangerous strength the arm already 
so much stronger than her own, and which at the same 
time so crazes the brain God meant to guide that manly 
arm that it strikes down the wife a man loves and the 
children for whom when sober he w r ould die? 
Dependent for the support of herself and little ones and 
for the maintenance of her home, upon the strength 



woman's right to the ballot. 235 

which alcohol masters and the skill it renders futile, will 
the wife and mother cast her vote to open or to close the 
rum-shop door over against that home? 

"Then there is a second instinct, so much higher and 
more sacred that I would not speak of it too near the 
first. It is as deep, but how high it reaches up toward 
Heaven — the instinct of a mother's love, a wife's 
devotion, a sister's faithfulness, a daughter's loyalty! 
Friends, this love of women's hearts was given for 
purposes of wider blessing to poor humanity than some 
of us have dreamed. Before this century shall end the 
rays of love which shine out from woman's heart shall no 
longer be, as now, divergent so far as the liquor traffic is 
concerned; but through that magic lens, that powerful 
sunglass which we term the ballot, they shall converge 
their power, and burn and blaze on the saloon, till it 
shrivels up and in lurid vapors curls away like mist under 
the hot gaze of sunshine. Ere long our brothers, hedged 
about by temptations, even as we are by safeguards, shall 
thus match force with force; shall set over against the 
dealer's avarice our timid instinct of self-protection, and 
match the drinker's love of liquor by our love of him. 
When this is done you will have doomed the rum power 
in America, even as you doomed the slave power when 
you gave the ballot to the slave. 



"'But women should content themselves with edu- 



236 SUNSHINE. 

eating public sentiment/ says one. Nay, we can shorten 
the process ; for we have the sentiment all educated and 
stored away, ready for use in brain and heart. Only 
give us an opportunity to turn it to account where in 
the least time it can achieve the most ! Let the great 
guns of influence, now pointing into vacancy, be swung 
to the level of benignant use and pointed on election day 
straight into the faces of the foe! 'No; but she should 
train her son to vote aright/ suggests another. But if 
she could go along with him, and thus make one vote 
two, should we have a superfluous majority in a struggle 
intense as this one is to be? And then how unequal is 
her combat for the right to train her boy ! Enter yonder 
saloon. See them gathered around their fiery or their 
foamy cups, according to the predominance in their 
veins of Celtic or of Teuton blood. What are they 
talking of, those sovereign citizens? The times have 
changed. It is no longer tariff or no tariff, resumption 
of specie payments, or even the behavior of our Southern 
brethren that occupies their thought. No. Home 
questions have come elbowing their way to the front. 
The child in the midst is also in the market-place, and 
they are bidding for him there, the politicians of the 
saloon. So skillfully will they make out the slate, so 
vigorously turn the crank of the machine, that, in spite 
of churches and temperance societies combined, the 
measures dear to them will triumph and measures dear 
to the fond mother heart will fail. Give her, at least, a 



237 



fair chance to offset by her ballot the machinations 
which imperil her son. 

"women cannot fight." 

"'But women cannot fight/ you say, 'and for every 
ballot cast we must tally with a bayonet/ Pray tell us 
when the law was promulgated that we must analyze the 
vote at an election, and throw out the ballots of all 
men aged and decrepit, halt and blind? Do not let the 
colossal example of Judge David Davis so fill our field 
of vision that we cannot perceive brain, and not bulk, to 
be the rational basis of citizenship. Avoirdupois counts 
greatly among the Zulus; but it is a consideration far 
less weighty with the Americans than it was before the 
Geneva Arbitration. I venture the prediction that this 
Republic will prove herself the greatest fighter of the 
nineteenth and twentieth centuries ; but her bullets will 
be molded into printers' type, her Gatling guns will be 
the pulpit and the platform, her war be a war of w r ords, 
and underneath the white storm of men's and women's 
ballots her enemies — state rights, the saloon, and the 
commune — shall find their only shroud. 
"woman's right." 

"Of the right of woman to the ballot I shall say 
nothing. All persons of intelligence, whose prejudices 
have not become indurated beyond the power of logic's 
sledge-hammer to break them, have been convinced 



238 SUNSHINE. 

already. For the rest there is no cure save one — the 
death cure — which comes or soon or late and will open 
more eyes than it closes. Of the Republic's right to 
woman's ballot I might say much. Well did two leaders 
of public thought set forth that right when Joseph Cook 
declared that 'woman's vote would be to the vices in our 
great cities what the lightning is to the oak'; and whea 
Richard S. Storrs said : 'If women want the suffrage they 
will be sure to have it, and I don't know but when it 
comes it will turn out to be the precious amethyst that 
drives drunkenness out of politics?' 



"'But women do not care to vote.' This is the 'last 
ditch' of the conservatives. The evolution of temperance 
sentiment among women hitherto conservative refutes 
this argument, yet I confess there are many w r ho do not 
yet perceive their duty. But Jack's beanstalk furnishes 
only a tame illustration of the growth of women in this 
direction in the years since the crusade. Of this swift 
growth I have already given abundant proof. It is, in 
my judgment, the most solid basis of gratitude on this 
national anniversary. 

"During past years the brave women who pioneered 
the equal suffrage movement, and whose perceptions of 
justice w r ere keen as a Damascus blade, took for their 
rallying cry: 'Taxation without representation is 
tyranny.' But the average woman, who has nothing to 



woman's right to the ballot. 239 

be taxed, declines to go forth to battle on that issue. 
Since the crusade, plain, practical temperance people 
have begun appealing to this same average woman 
saying, 'With your vote we can close the saloons that 
tempt your boys to ruin'; and behold! they have 
transfixed with the arrow of conviction that mother's 
heart, and she is ready for the fray. Not rights, but 
duties; not her need alone, but that of her children and 
her country ; not the 'woman/ but the 'human' question 
is stirring woman's heart and breaking down her 
prejudice to-day. For they begin to perceive the 
divine fact that civilization, in proportion as it becomes 
Christianized, will make increasing demands upon 
creation's gentler half; that the Ten Commandments and 
the Sermon on the Mount are voted up or voted down 
upon election day; and that a military exigency requires 
the army of the Prince of Peace to call out its 
reserves." 

Let the women of every State follow the plan of their 
sisters in Illinois and commence working for the power 
to protect their homes. To help them in their work, 
there is added to this chapter a copy of the Illinois 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union Home Pro- 
tection petition, which has been circulated for some time 
past in that State. 

Give woman the ballot, oh, lordly man! tied up polit- 
ically until you dare not call your soul your own. The 
writer believes that not only will woman's vote save her 



240 SUNSHINE, 

boy, but that it will quickly free your soul from the ties 
that have wrapped you round about for so long. The 
views of Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, on this subject 
are worth repeating here : 

"There stands a noble statehouse in the cornfields 
near Springfield, Illinois, and Lincoln's grave lies 
under its shadow. Above his grave a legislature will 
be petitioned this winter by ladies of Illinois to give 
women of legal age the right to vote in cases of local 
option under temperance laws. * * * In New 
Hampshire the line has already been broken as to the 
exclusion of women from participation in the settlement 
of questions closely touching the home. Let it be 
noticed that New Hampshire, a conservative New 
England State, has just given to women the right to 
vote on all questions concerning the school laws. I 
am not a woman suffragist. ' Do not applaud this 
platform under the mistaken idea that I am a defender 
of extreme positions as to woman's rights. I am 
meditating on that theme. But this I dare say, that 
one of the fragments of self-protection for woman — 
namely, a right to vote, concerning temperance laws, 
when the question of local option is up — I am willing 
to defend, and intend to defend, to the end of the 
chapter. Great natural justice is on the side of such 
a demand. "Woman's interests are among the chief 
ones concerned; and as to family divisions, why, they 
come largely from temperance laxness. Woman surely 



woman's eight to the ballot. 241 

has political intelligence enough to understand the 
difference between license and no license, especially 
when she has suffered under a lax execution of the 
temperance laws. The difference is so plain between 
local freedom and no local freedom to sell liquor that 
woman without any great participation in the turmoil 
of politics might be expected to have an intelligent 
vote on this subject. I know that many cultivated 
and refined women say they do not want women to 
vote, because they do not want to increase the amount 
of ignorant suffrage. Well, I respect the intelligence 
and the refinement of the ladies who make such 
remarks; but I believe that on most moral questions 
woman is likely to be more intelligent and certainly 
more disinterested than man. I am told by many 
of the best authorities that women who are opposed 
to female suffrage at large are usually in favor of this 
modified measure. I am assured that a majority of 
the thoughtful, cultivated women of the United 
States, or certainly of the Northern States, can be 
expected to favor this demand for a vote to be given 
to women in questions of local option, concerning 
temperance laws. If a majority of women want 
such a vote, Heaven grant their desire ! Women 
would be united on this topic. Woman's vote would 
be to city vices depending on intemperance what 
the lightning is to the oak. God send us that 
lightning ! " 



242 SUNSHINE. 



FOR GOD AND HOME AND NATIVE LAND. 



HOME PROTECTION PETITION. 



ILLINOIS TV. 0. T. TJ. 



To be Returned to — — , at , by the Day of , Without Fail. 

[N. B. — This Petition will be presented at the State Capitol at the 
earliest possible date in the session of the Legislature, which 
convenes on the day of — , 18 — , by the following Com- 
mittee : Any number of copies will be sent to any address* 

if desired ; but it is also earnestly requested that persons interested 
in utilizing the influence of woman against the legalized traffic in 
strong drink will have printed or written copies of the Petition 
made and circulated from house to house. Let them also be sent to 
editors, ministers, Sunday-school and public school teachers, and to 
all Reform Clubs and other temperance societies. All ministers 
and temperance speakers are requested to present the Petition to 
their audiences, after a sermon, address, or exhortation on the 
subject of which it treats. The following method of securing 
signatures in audiences is recommended : Previous to opening the 
meeting, place in each pew a narrow strip of paper, with the words 
"Names of Men over 21" written across the top, and "Names of 
Women over 21" half way down the strip. After reading the 
Petition, at the close of the meeting, call attention to these papers 
and constitute the gentleman or lady sitting in the end of each pew 



woman's right to the ballot. 243 

or seat nearest the aisle a committee of one to see that all in that seat 
have the opportunity to sign the slip of paper. Let one person be in 
attendance in each aisle with pencils to lend, and let this person 
gather up the slips as soon as signed. These autographs are to be 
sent to headquarters, to be pasted upon the Petition. While the 
signing proceeds, such hymns as "America" may be sung by 
the choir. When the largest number of signatures possible has 
been obtained, send the list of autograph signatures, stating 
plainly where they were obtained and paying postage in full, 

to , at Headquarters State W. C. T. U., in — . 

Write on one side only, giving name of town and county on each 
list of names. Paste more paper on the Petition as required. 
Karnes may be signed in pencil, and autographs only are 
desired] 

To the Senate and House of Bepresentatives of the State of 



Whereas, In these years of temperance work the argument of 
defeat in our contest with the saloons has taught us that our efforts 
are merely palliative of a disease in the body politic, which can 
never be cured until law and moral suasion go hand in hand in our 
beloved State ; and 

Whereas, The instincts of self-protection and of apprehension 
for the safety of her children, her tempted loved ones, and her home 
render woman the natural enemy of the saloons ; Therefore, your 

petitioners, men and women of the State of ■ , having at 

heart the protection of our homes from their worst enemy, the 
legalized traffic in strong drink, do hereby most earnestly pray your 
honorable body that, by suitable legislation, it may be provided 

that in the State of the question of licensing at any time, in 

any locality, the sale of any and all intoxicating drinks shall be 
submitted to and determined by ballot, in which women of lawful 
age shall be privileged to take part, in the same manner as men, 
When voting on the question of license. 



244 SUNSHINE. 

From all over our land there goes ever up the cry of 
the widow and the mother robbed of her child. Man 
answers not the heart cry of the bereaved, and surely 
such woe must not last forever. Let us, then, be up and 
doing, as men, all that men can do, and after giving our 
wives, mothers and sweethearts the right to vote with 
us, we can sit down and confidently w T ait the dawning of 
a day devoted entirely to sobriety, home and God. 

The political voters of to-day are impure. There has 
been so little change in them for years past that, like a 
pool long quiet, stagnation and impurity has been the 
result. How shall a change be brought about that shall 
purify these party pools? Introduce into them a new 
element — an element pure as the snowflake — the purity 
of woman. Let fossils and frauds cry out against such 
an innovation, it will save homes and hearts and lives, 
sons and brothers and fathers, and the individual once 
saved the nation is safe. 




CHAPTER XXL 

THE CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 

HOW me a church that is not a working temper- 
ance church and I will show you a church that 
is not increasing to any appreciable extent. 
Temperance is as much a part of the church's active 
Christian work as any one other thing included in its 
curriculum of labor for souls. Let each and every 
church stop, not only now, but forever, quarreling about 
the benefits of its own particular creed, dogma or article 
of faith and go at once into the highways and byways 
hunting souls. 

With every hope and aspiration tending heavenward, 
the author has long since forgotten creeds and com- 
menced the study of Christ and his teachings and firmly 
believes that what the Christian church wants to-day 
are fewer creeds, fewer dogmas, fewer fine pulpits and 
fine clothes, fewer flowery sermons, fewer mortgages, 
fewer missionaries in Hindostan and Borriaboola Gha 
and more of Christ's Christianity, more temperance 
and more missionary work at home. 



246 SUNSHINE. 

"But," says a Christian conservative, "Christ com- 
manded us to preach the gospel to all nations." 

True enough, good brother, but when he uttered 
the command he added to it these words: "Beginning 
first at Jerusalem," and first let us convert the heathen 
here at Jerusalem — at home — and then strike for 
Madagascar and Terra del Fuego. 

There are starving bodies and starving souls within a 
stone's throw of half the churches in our land, while 
millions of dollars cross the ocean each year for races 
that never had a famine and that are being taught 
Christianity at the expense of our own poor heathen at 
home. 

In Bleak House, by the world's novelist, Charles 
Dickens, there is a pathetic picture of little Jo, a poor 
street boy, verily starving, sitting in his anguish upon 
the steps of the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts. The picture is as satirical as 
anything of Shakespeare's or of Hogarth's and drew 
from some friend of foreign missions a sharp letter 
directed to Mr. Dickens. The letter elicited the 
following answer from the great writer: 

"I am decidedly of the opinion that the two works, 
the home and the foreign mission, are not conducted 
with an equal hand, and that the home claim is by far 
the stronger and the more pressing of the two. Indeed, 
I have great doubts whether a great commercial country, 
holding communication with all parts of the world, can 



CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 247 

better Christianize the benighted portions of it than by 
the bestowal of its wealth and energy on the making of 
good Christians at home, and on the utter removal of 
neglected and untaught childhood from its streets, before 
it ventures elsewhere. For, if it steadily persist in this 
work, working downward toward the lowest, the 
travelers of all grades whom it sends abroad will be 
good, exemplary, practical missionaries, instead of 
undoers of what the best professed missionaries can do. 
These are my opinions, founded, I believe, on some 
knowledge of facts and some observation. If I could 
be scared out of them, let me add, in all good humor, 
by such easily-impressed words as 'anti-Christian' or 
'irreligious/ I should think that I deserved them in 
their real significance." 

I feel myself responsible for the heathen at my door, 
but not for those in "foreign parts" until my brothers 
and sisters nearer home are saved, and if, perchance, I 
drop off into my reward before all are saved at home, 
the heathen afar will be upon the shoulders of some one 
to come after me. This may not be conservative 
religion of to-day, but it is the religion of the one who 
writes this book and who feels that for three years 
last past, if never before, he has walked hand in hand 
with God. His life is consecrated to tiie service 
of the heathen at his own door, and if millions must- 
go abroad they must be raised by somebody else. 

If the church to-day would for one year forget its 



248 SUNSHINE. 

charges in China and come to the conclusion that the 
souls in the Poverty Flats of its own neighborhood 
were worth just as much to God as the souls of the 
almond-eyed Celestials, and for that space of time devote 
its dollars and its labors to the home heathen, the 
result at the end of the year would be considerably 
larger in the number of converts than last year's work in 
the land of tea and pig-tails. 

There are too many empty stomachs in this land 
to-night and too few missionaries with food and clothes 
on the way to the hovels where those cavernous stomachs 
are to be found. Let us follow Christ's plan — feeding 
bodies before commencing the work of saving souls* 
The miracle of the loaves and fishes shows that 
Christ didn't believe in preaching religion to a starving 
man. 

Let the church of to-day go down into the back 
streets and the grog-shops of our own land and 
commence the work of whitening souls and it will be 
astonished at the work already cut out to its hand. It 
will be kept so busy that foreign heathen will be 
speedily forgotten. 

The author cries out to the Christian church in behalf 
of six hundred thousand drunkards and millions of 
moderate drinkers. A drinker is not a Christian, unless 
Paul was a false guide, "If meat make my brother to 
offend, I will eat no flesh while the w T orld standeth." 

It is the example of the man in the high places, 



CHUKCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 249 

the man in the church pew, who takes his drink 
moderately (for a time), which is making thousands 
of weaker brothers to offend by drunkenness every year. 
The Christian will stop the practice as Paul promised 
to ; the man who needs converting (no matter how 
loudly he prays) will keep it up. The Christian's first 
duty is example — example of the right kind to offer as a 
pattern. Strong drink on the table of a church member 
is more dangerous a thousand fold than strong drink on 
the bar of a saloon. The church member's guests may 
never visit a saloon to be tempted, but in the company 
of their friends, with wine upon the table, their fall is 
only a question of time; and to that man "who giveth his 
neighbor drink/' whether "that man" be a saloon keeper 
or a deacon, the fiat has gone forth — "Better for him had 
he never been born, that a millstone be put about his neck 
and he' be drowned." There are those who think that 
curse was uttered only against the saloon keeper. In 
God's hour of judgment we shall see. 

The church as a church must set an example that oan 
be followed safely. There are few churches whose rules 
allow indulgence in drink, and yet in how many of these 
churches is the drunken member brought before the 
officers and censured? Where the church winks upon 
this sin its example is pernicious, and unless a change be 
made and the drinking member talked to as though he 
had committed adultery or any other sin against which 
the church has issued a pronunciamento, the church can 



250 SUNSHINE. 

not prosper ; it is neither true to itself nor to God. If 
drinking is forbid in } T our church rules see to it that 
whoever violates that rule is called before the church, 
whether he be the laboring man who sits in the gallery 
or the millionaire who pays half the expenses of the 
church himself. 

"But," says a weak-kneed brother, "what will become 
of our church if we lose Mr. A and his money by such a 
course ? " 

What will become of your church, sir, if you 
anger and drive away the Holy Spirit? Take your 
choice. 

There is another thing the church must do. Be 
social. Respect the man in jeans as highly as the man 
in broadcloth. God does ; and the church below should 
be a reflex of the church above. Welcome the poor man 
and his pale-faced wife to your church socials and extra 
meetings as though they were a king and a queen. 
That is the way God will welcome them by and by, and 
if your welcome is too cold to His poor children on 
earth, He will welcome you, perhaps, as the veriest 
peasant that seeks Heaven. Let the church be known 
as a social, home-like place. 

"That was a good sermon of yours, parson, on 'the 
recognition of friends in Heaven/ " said a poor member 
to his minister after a morning's sermon, "but I wish 
you would preach one next Sunday on the recognition 
of friends on earth. I've been a member of this church 



CHUKCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 251 

for two years and not a soul has shook my hand, and 
asked me where I live," 

A church like that may have the highest steeple and 
the biggest mortgage in town, but Christ, ten to one, 
could oftener be found in the little African church, 
fifteen by forty feet, one story high, way out in the 
outskirts of the city, where the members weigh every 
man by his acts and his "aniens" and never look at his 
clothes. 

Again, let the church do something openly for 
temperance. 

Rev. A. G. Lawson, of Brooklyn, New York, has told 
rare plain truths in the following words: 

"Christian churches should organize effectively to 
combat this sin, and fight the good fight to the end. 
To do this we must uncover masked batteries in the 
practices of our own members. The Christian women 
of Brooklyn say that they had no conception of the 
extent of the traffic until they entered upon their work. 
But, sadder than all else, they so often came face to face 
with men and women in the churches who indirectly 
fostered the traffic. It is God's voice that says: 
'Cleanse your hands, ye sinners ; touch not the unclean 
thing/ We have secured so much during this century 
that we have little voice for censure. Yet there are 
ugly facts about this temperance question, in its relation 
to pulpits and pews, which cannot be overlooked. In 
one city a letter requesting every minister to preach 



252 suxshijne. 

at least once each year on this subject was complied 
with by twelve ministers, and one of them defended 
moderate drinking. One minister credits total absti- 
nence to the devil, forgetting the poser which Jesus put 
to the Pharisees, 'How can Satan cast out Satan V 
Another has said he would as soon admit a Mormon 
elder to his pulpit as a total-abstinence lecturer. 
Prominent officers in some churches are often intoxi- 
cated, and remain undisciplined. In one church nearly 
half the revenue was for years from the profits of an 
extensive brewery." 

Plymouth Church has over forty buildings rented for 
saloon purposes, and yet claims to be doing all in 
its power for Christ. Out upon such work for the 
Master! 

A church to work rightly in the great cause of 
temperance must not only be clean itself, but it must 
openly labor for the cleansing of the people. Brother 
Lawson lays down the following ideas on church 
temperance work, which every true Christian should 
unhesitatingly indorse : 

"Suffer a few hints as to ways and means of useful 
effort. We should make room for temperance in 
Religious conventions, Teachers' institutes, and Sunday- 
school concerts. We rejoice that many of these bodies 
record their views of this question, from time to time, 
in resolutions, and in some the topic is fully discussed. 
But to be permanent, our work should be regular. We 



CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 253 

would arouse and educate the people by sermons, at 
stated times. Three large churches in Brooklyn — 
Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian — united cnce 
in three months, for a year, each pastor in succession 
preaching on temperance. For six years past we have 
preached once a month during the winter on this subject. 
We would set apart one of the prayer-meetings each 
month for this purpose. Get the people to praying 
upon this subject, and their apathy will come up by the 
roots; the Friday night preceding our sermon we 
devote to this cause, though without entirely excluding 
general topics of interest. 'This kind goeth not out but 
by prayer and fasting/ We would have distinct 
organizations. In some Sunday-schools there is an 
organization of the scholars, and an afternoon is given 
to them once in three months. There are several 
working temperance churches in Brooklyn, New York, 
Philadelphia, and other cities, which aim to hold good 
public meetings monthly, and always circulate tracts 
and papers. In this work the pastor must expect to 
take the laboring oar. 

"The light and truth poured in upon the minds of the 
people through the above agencies, and the papers and 
tracts distributed, will awaken the churches to the 
importance of giving a generous financial support to 
temperance work. Our churches should give this cause 
a place beside their Bible, Missionary and Tract 
Societies. Had this been done from the first, the 



254 SUNSHINE. 

cause of temperance would have been vastly in advance 
of its present position, and the contributions for every 
other benevolent object largely increased. Churches 
flanked by saloons yearly destroying fivefold more 
property than would sustain them do no temperance 
work as churches, and have no money for the cause. 
From churches and from benevolent societies ascends 
every year the cry of lack of funds. If only a tithe 
of the millions worse than w r asted in drink w r ere turned 
into our church -and religious treasuries, the ignorance, 
pauperism, crime, and domestic misery thus stayed, 
apart from the richer blessings of the Gospel conferred, 
would make a jubilee of rejoicing in heaven and 
on earth. 

"Last of all, men ought always to use the pledge. We 
make the pledge a joint bond, and on our knees before 
God seal it with prayer. We have taken the pledge of a 
man for a fortnight, and of scores for thirty days. We 
follow the man up, call on him as the pledge expires, 
and get him to renew it for a little longer time. So 
we nurse his weakness into strength, until he does not 
hesitate to make the bond for life, and it may be that we 
give him also the hand of fellowship with Christ's 
church. The cross of Jesus has no greater foe than 
the wine-cup and the bar-room. No two institutions 
are more diverse in their origin, spirit, and fruit than 
Christ's churches and Satan's saloons. The reigns of 
King Jesus and of King Alcohol are always in 



CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 255 

inverse ratio. Christians must oppose intemperance to 
the end, because the work we build it destroys. 
We must fight it because it fights against us. It 
robs us of more members, and keeps away from 
church services more people, than all other causes 
combined." 

Again, let the church put no temptation in the way 
of the man who is brought into its fold and who has 
been a drinker. 

"How can the church put temptation in his 
way?" says a brother who feels hurt at the above 
suggestion. 

By surrounding him with brothers in the church who 
are moderate drinkers, is one way of tempting him. 
He was told that to come into the church he must 
conquer his appetite, with God's help, and yet he finds 
himself surrounded by drinking members. Let that 
be stopped. If he has no right to drink, they have no 
right to drink, whether they contribute a thousand 
dollars to his one or not. Eemove evil example 
from him. 

Again, remove strong drink from the communion 
table. 

"Why, sir, we use only a delicate grape wine at 
our church ! " 

No matter what you use, light grape wine or forty 
rod bourbon; they both have alcohol in them, if 



256 SUNSHINE. 

fermentation has taken place, and consequently are 
full of the devil. 

"But Christ offered wine at the Last Supper and we 
dare not go contrary to his teachings." 

If Christ offered wine at the Last Supper that could 
make drunken, the author renounces Christ as a 
false teacher and a dangerous guide. He would rather 
worship the god of the Turk, who allowed no wine 
to be used by his children and who to-day speaks 
of a renegade drunken Turk as one who "drinks 
like a Christian." Christ denounced the use and 
making of wine in no measured terms. God thundered 
through the patriarchs fiercest invectives against its 
use in any way and some one has said "The drunkard 
shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." In one 
hundred and sixty-seven places in the old and new 
Bible is wine denounced and if, in the face of all that, 
you tell me that Christ made intoxicating wine and 
gave it to his friends and disciples, I say that Christ is 
an unsafe guide. But I believe that Christ was 
consistent in every act from the lowly birth to the 
dread tragedy on Calvary and I believe that the wine 
of the Last Supper was harmless as mother's milk for 
babe in arms. And further, conservative brother, in 
no part of the Bible is anything said about wine at the 
Lord's Supper. 

"Nothing said about wine, sir! Why, what do you 
mean ? " 



CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 257 

Read the story, brother, and you will find that Christ's 
only words, in speaking of the drink he offered, were : 
"Take ye this cup and drink. " He used the word cup 
only and never said wine once, but he further added, 
"Drink ye this in remembrance of me and to glorify 
your Father which is in Heaven." 

Question.— Can God be glorified by the drinking 
of that fluid which has murdered millions of his 
creatures, and which is to-day the greatest enemy God's 
church has to contend against? 

Question. — Would Christ dare to attempt the glorifi- 
cation of His Father by the drinking of that against 
which His Father has pronounced such dread 
curses ? 

Question. — As the entire service of communion, as 
performed to-day, is only typical, can not water be 
used in place of wine without displeasing a loving God 
and Savior ? 

Question. — As Paul has told us to eat no meat 
lest we make our brother to offend, can we safely put to 
the lips of the reformed drunkard the very devil which 
ruined him? 

Question. — If wine must be used, had we not better 
follow the example of many churches and make raisin 
wine, or use wine specially prepared, the taste of 
which will not arouse the old appetite for drink? 

In working in temperance meetings and elsewhere, 
don't tell the drinking man he must join church to 



258 SUNSHINE. 

conquer his appetite. It is not true. It would be a 
great help if the church was a warm, social church, 
but a man, blessed with God's help, can stop drinking 
outside of the church. One cause of the many 
flimsy church members is the fact that they were 
taken into membership before they were converted 
as a sort of spiritual dose of medicine for some 
moral disease. Give the man all the help of the 
church in his struggle for reform, and when his 
brain is cleared of whisky it will be in better 
working order to grasp the beauties and the peculiar 
features of the religion you offer him, and if he 
be brought into membership after a protracted 
spell of sobriety, you have a better member ever 
after. 

Let the church stand by the men its members 
get to stop drinking. Help them in all ways 
they may need help. Get work for them, feed 
their families, if such help is needed. This will 
keep a warm spot in their hearts' for the church 
that so treats them and w T hen they do at last hunt 
a church home your church will be that home. 

If you find a man you have labored with going 
back to the old life, don't give him up. A rule 
has been set for such labor. He must be taken 
hold of seventy and seven times seven before Christ 
says "let go." Go down into the gutter after 
him and bring him back into the sunshine of your 



CHURCHES AND THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION. 259 

heart. Constant love will claim its own for eternity 
after a time. Christ died at the last for you; you can 
not do too much for his children. 

The author does not ask too much of the Christian 
church. Above he has written a few thoughts and 
in concluding the chapter he asks that the church 
be ready at all times to give strength to the tempted 
man within or without its pale. 

The mother eagle, who has pushed her tiny babe 
over the side of the nest into the air below to give 
it its first lesson in flying, watches its every 
motion and when she sees the little wanderer 
becoming tired, she drops down beneath it and, 
spreading her broad wings, rises upw T ard with almost 
imperceptible motion, higher, higher, and higher, 
until she catches her little one on her broad back 
and bears it back to its home for a new baptism of rest 
and strength. _ 

This is the last duty we would ask of the church. 
The reformed men are sent out into a new life, 
a life of sobriety and morality. They may be 
tempted, they may falter by the way. Then let 
the Christian church, spreading wide its wings of 
love and faith, catch the tempted ones on its 
broad back of prayer and charity and, rising higher, 
higher and higher, lay the weakened brother at the 
very foot of Christ's throne for a new baptism of 
pardon and strength. 



260 SUNSHINE. 

Let the church go to work in earnest against 
the devil of drink, the greatest devil fighting it 
to-day, and by constant prayer and work the church 
militant w T ill be a veritable church triumphant, for 
when strong drink is removed from our land, the 
church w r ill but have to open its doors to find its pews 
and its roll of members filled to overflowing. 




CHAPTER XXII. 



ROM the continued suffering caused by drink and 
the constant labors of the temperance reformers 
by moral suasion, it should not be inferred that 
there is no other way, at present, open for fighting the 
drink traffic. There is hardly a State in the Union the 
laws of which concerning the traffic in intoxicants are 
not continually and openly violated by the liquor 
dealers. And each violation of these laws can be used 
as a means toward the end we pray for — the closing 
forever of the doors of the grog-shop. In Ohio, for 
instance, every glass of liquor sold to a minor or a 
habitual drunkard is a direct violation of State law, 
and if the temperance people will but attend to these 
cases much good will result. 

In many communities in this and other States, which 
forbid the sale of liquor to minors and drunkards, the 
temperance people hire detectives, whose business it is 
to watch for such sales. 

When a saloon keeper is found handing the glass of 



262 SUNSHINE. 

ruin to the fair-cheeked boy, or a man gone so far down 
the street of Hell as to be known as a common drunkard, 
a warrant is procured and he is brought before a justice 
of the peace, whose duty it is to examine into the 
matter, and if the witnesses tell a straight story and the 
man's guilt be clearly shown the justice binds him over 
to the grand jury for final action. 

It is best to have a dozen or more cases ready at the 
same time, and these are easily obtainable for there is 
scarcely a saloonist in Ohio, or any other State, who 
does not violate the law every hour in the day. As 
soon, then, as the saloon keeper has procured his bail 
and been discharged he is to be at once re-arrested on 
another warrant and tried for one of the other violations. 
If found guilty, as before, in the preliminary 
examination before the justice, he must be again bound 
over to the grand jury and must again give bond. As 
soon as the second case is ended, another must be 
sprung, until the man begins to find trouble in getting 
bail. And this will not be long. When his friends 
are approached half a dozen times a day to go on his 
bond for a hundred or more dollars, they w r ill begin to 
look into the probabilities a little. They will argue 
that if the temperance people are growing so determined 
in the matter, they had better not risk too much money 
on the saloon keeper's bond, lest, growing fearful 
of the consequences of his trials before the grand 
jury, he should take it into his head to disappear 



LEGAL SUASION. 263 

before the jury is called, leaving his bondsmen in 
the lurch. 

Now is the time for the temperance people to propose 
to the saloonist that if he will close up his place, give 
to them his government license and agree to leave the 
business for good, they will spring no more cases on 
him and withdraw the past cases from the docket. In 
one county in Ohio the Temperance Union holds 
seventeen government licenses of as many saloon keepers 
gotten in the above way. 

And if they do not succeed in getting his license and 
promise to leave the business from the saloon keeper, 
this constant prosecution and the fines that will be 
assessed against him by the grand jury will soon cause 
him to fold up his tent like the Arabs and as silently 
steal away to some community where "persecution," as 
he will call it, is not so lively, and a man may murder 
his neighbor in peace. 

Again, all unseemly disturbance, drunken revelries, 
and quarrels in the saloon at late hours at night can 
be turned to account. The keeper of said saloon may 
be arrested for disturbing the peace of his neighbors 
and in this way be "worried" out of town. He can 
also be indicted as "allowing a public nuisance," and all 
cases of rows, quarrels and revelries be used as 
evidences thereof. 

Every temperance organization should have its 
committee on law, whose duty it shall be to employ 



264 SUNSHINE. 

detectives, themselves ferret out violations of law, hunt 
up witnesses, etc., and should have a fund raised 
in advance for their use. A lawyer should be 
employed by the year, and «very effort possible should 
be made to fight the saloon keeper with the strong arm 
of the law. 

A better motto, for our future temperance work, than 
"With malice toward none, with charity for all," can be 
found in — 

"Moral suasion for the man who drinks, 
Mental suasion for the man who thinks, 
Legal suasion for the drunkard maker, 
Prison suasion for the statute breaker." 

A violation of law by any man not a saloonist is 
quickly visited by arrest and punishment. Constables 
who make their living by ferreting out wrong-doers are 
constantly making fees out of all classes of society that, 
by mistake or otherwise, lay themselves open to the 
clutches of the law; but for obvious reasons the 
constable seldom troubles the man who makes it a 
business to violate the law every hour in the day. 
The relation between constables, police officers, marshals 
and saloon keepers is one not easily defined, but 
nevertheless it is one that is eminently satisfactory to 
the saloon keeper. If the guardians of city or village 
would but make half the effort to stop the illegal selling 
of whisky that they do to make fees out of the poor 
fellow who has had whisky illegally sold to him, they 
would help along the temperance reformation wonder- 



LEGAL. SUASION. 265 

fully. This statement is made because the said 
guardians are sworn to do just such things — to arrest all 
who violate the laws. And they have as much right to 
arrest a saloon keeper, whom they see selling liquor to a 
boy or a drunkard, as they have to arrest a man whom 
they may find beating his wife or robbing a man in a 
dark alley. 

Let the temperance people make complaint of all 
officers who wink at the violations of the law, and 
see to it at elections that your votes be cast for men 
that you have reason to believe will do their duty in 
the premises. The election of proper marshals, council- 
men and mayors has much to do with the sobriety 
of a city. 

The temperance people must not be satisfied with 
meetings on the subject of temperance and moral 
suasion alone. The law can be made to help along the 
work if people be but brave and determined enough to 
see to its enforcement. Each citizen of a community 
has the right to swear out a warrant and cause the 
arrest of any saloon keeper violating any of the city or 
State ordinances — as much right as mayor or prosecuting 
attorney, marshal or constable. And if this were but 
done oftener, more good would result therefrom than 
has been accomplished in years past by loud lamen- 
tations and "cards" in the newspapers that "our laws are 
carried out with too much laxity." If the citizens 
themselves are lax and lethargic in the matter, it is little 



266 SUNSHINE. 

wonder that the officers are not any too vigilant. 
They desire the weight of public approval to back 
them up, and if the public has nothing to say they 
prefer the friendship of the saloonist to his enmity. 

In Indiana, permission to sell intoxicants at retail is 
granted by the county commissioners for certain sums, 
but the applicant must first present evidence of 
possessing a good moral character, though why a 
man should need a good character to murder his 
neighbor is more than our philosophy can fathom. 
The applicant must, moreover, advertise his intention 
of applying for a license some weeks before the semi- 
annual sitting of the commissioners, and as soon sas this 
advertisement be noticed in the county papers the 
temperance people should commence work. If the man 
be already engaged in the business, his place should be 
watched and full particulars of all violations of the law 
be stored away for use. It is unlawful in Indiana to 
sell liquor to a minor or to a man in the habit of 
becoming intoxicated; to allow minors to congregate in 
the saloon, to keep a dice-box or a billiard-table of any 
kind, with or upon which "men may play for 
drinks, checks or other articles of value." 

If opposition is to be made to the granting of a 
license to any saloon keeper, a petition, signed by 
any number of citizens, must be published in the 
county papers remonstrating against such granting 
of a license, and a copy must also be presented 



LEGAL SUASION* 267 

to the board of commissioners. The matter will 
then become a case for trial before the commissioners 
sitting as a court. The temperance people must employ- 
legal help, have witnesses ready on the day set 
for trial, and endeavor to prove by the fact of past 
violations of the statute that the applicant is not 
a fit man to be intrusted with the right of selling 
strong drink. All facts derogatory to his character 
as an upright citizen must be brought forward and 
the case be well fought if success is to be obtained. 
If the Indiana temperance people will but make 
themselves ready to fight every application for license 
they will close a great many saloons now open and keep 
out of the business many men anxiously waiting a chance 
to enter it. In Rush County, Indiana, in December, 
1879, those able legal and temperance advocates, Hon. 
Jesse J. Spann and Hon. Judge Cullen, successfully 
resisted the application for license of three saloonists, 
much to the joy of the hundreds of temperance people 
resident in Rushville, the county seat. They proved 
beyond question past violation of the statute laws, and 
hence the court of commissioners could but infer that 
applicants who, having the requisite license for the one 
year, violated the laws of the State, did not present proof 
positive of having that "good moral character" the 
State demanded of all who would continue " giving 
their neighbors drink" and making them paupers and 
criminals. Let the Indiana people see to it that every 



268 SUNSHINE. 

applicant for a license be met by a band of temperance 
remonstrators determined to carry their side of the case 
just as far as the applicant dare carry his. Without a 
remonstrance against his application a saloon keeper has 
but to pay the necessary license fee and procure his per- 
mission to commit murder and place poison at once back 
of his bar. And the Indiana temperance people should 
likewise see to it that their votes on election days are 
cast for men who, as county commissioners, will do their 
whole duty in the premises without fear or favor. 

The views advanced above for action in Ohio and 
Indiana are valuable for a number of other States as 
well, and the temperance unions throughout our entire 
land should always keep a committee on law actively at 
work in each community — men who understand the law, 
and who, after studying the laws ruling in their own 
State and community, will make the necessary arrange- 
ments for carrying them out and fighting the traffic with 
legal suasion as earnestly as it is now being fought by 
moral suasion. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 

ANATICISM has been the cause of much 
lukewarmness among those who might be ex- 
pected to help the cause of temperance along. 
They feared to throw in their weight of opposition with 
the old-time temperance reformers who saw but the 
one way of helping along the cause — hard words for the 
liquor dealer and almost brute force as the means of 
driving the drinker from the saloon bar. These 
reformers of the old school preached a temperance 
religion of the hottest kind of hell-fire, and consequently 
did but a tithe of the good they desired sincerely 
enough to accomplish. The writer tries to avoid, as 
much as possible, the charge of being a temperance 
"fanatic," yet, in doing so, he gives not an inch to the 
opposition. But fanatical or not. he has made the 
assertion publicly, and here reiterates it, that he hopes to 
see the day when in every community the weekly 
temperance meeting will be held with the same regularity 
and relative surroundings of the church service of the 



270 SUNSHINE. 

past and present. Furthermore, he has spoken in favor 
of and prayed for the establishment in every community 
of the temperance church or tabernacle, a church whose 
religion should be God, humanity and temperance, freed 
from creed, dogma, or article of faith not found (and 
when found there religiously interpreted et verbatim, et 
literatim, et punctuatim,) in the word of God. A church 
whose sole religion should be love of God and love of 
man, with a platform strong enough to hold Jew and 
Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, and in which every 
service should be a revival one for more of Christ and 
more of temperance. The latter idea may never be 
more than an idea, but the former must come to pass if 
we ever expect success. In each and every community 
one night in the week, and if possible Sabbath afternoon 
as well, should be set apart for a regular temperance 
meeting, and every church and secret order and class 
of society should be connected with the meeting in one 
way or the other. The organization should be strictly 
non-sectarian, broad as the love of God, and its com- 
mittees should be chosen from each institution of 
morality in the community. The officers should be 
men and women of known activity, loving the work of 
saving souls, and w T ho w r ould do their duties regularly and 
with unction. The Sunday afternoon services should be 
of a religious cast — not too much solemnity, nor by any 
means too little., w T hile the week-day meeting should be 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 271 

of a character to bring to it every drinker in the town 
and the saloon keeper as well. 

The officers of such an organization should consist of 
at least one president, one male and one female vice 
president, one recording and one corresponding secretary, 
one chaplain, one treasurer, one committee on hall, 
(whose duties are similar to the duties of trustees of 
churches), one committee on programmes, one com- 
mittee on law (whose duties are explained in the 
preceding chapter), a committee on work, a committee on 
finance, a committee for visiting the drunkard and the 
poor, and a committee on reclamation, whose duty it 
should be to visit all backsliders and urge them to return 
to the fold. An advisory committee, to consist of 
representatives of the different churches and organi- 
zations included in the membership of the temperance 
union, may also be included in the list of committees. 
The number of each committee should not be under 
three or over seven, save in the latter one in which a 
place should be made for a representative from each 
church, order, etc., in the community. 

If possible a public hall should be obtained for the 
regular meetings of the society, many men and boys not 
liking to go to a church, besides which they can talk of 
the hall as their own, feel at home in it, and are not 
afraid to applaud a speaker (which latter is always 
satisfying to the speaker and a means of strength). A 
hall can usually be rented for one night iu the year for a 



272 SUNSHINE. 

moderate sum, the union furnishing their own janitor, 
who should be some reformed man belonging to the 
union, and who should be paid for his services. In 
renting a hall it is well to include a promise that 
the hall may be occupied for a week or longer 
by the union at a reduced rent, in case of a temper- 
ance revival, festivals, entertainments and the like. 
Many unions, moreover, rent a hall for the year, 
re-renting it on the nights not occupied by the regular 
meetings, and in this way often get their own rent for 
nothing and make money besides. 

At each meeting there should be a lady, appointed 
beforehand, to pin the ribbons on the pledge-signers, 
and also several ladies to circulate pledges through the 
audience. These persons may be elected as committees 
on pledges, ribbon, etc., or be appointed by the chair at 
each meeting. 

Frequent collections should be taken up and enter- 
tainments given, strawberry and oyster suppers in 
season, that the union may never lack for funds. Some 
organizations get up lecture courses during the winter 
months, employing the most noted orators and concert 
troupes to raise money for their work. Another plan is 
to advertise a lecture course, of six lectures, selling 
tickets for the entire course for fifty cents, or ten cents 
a single lecture, and then have the lectures given by 
home talent. One of your ministers could acceptably 
fill an evening with a lecture on foreign lands, or some 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 273 

other topic of which he has made a study ; a home 
physician could not only entertain but benefit the 
community by a talk on medical common sense, home 
treatment/ etc.; a lawyer might talk on "Every man his 
own lawyer/' giving an exposition of the fundamental 
principles of law that all could apply for themselves ; an 
editor might talk on "the press" and its relation to 
society and the nation; your superintendent of schools 
could follow in the course with a talk on education, and 
the last night be devoted to a musical and elocutionary 
entertainment, conducted by home talent. Such a course, 
costing literally nothing, would be of lasting pleasure 
and benefit and likewise cause a considerable "rise" in 
the funds of your organization. 

On the night of your regular weekly meeting, see that 
you begin promptly on time. This will soon break up 
the habit of "coming late," and likewise is no more than 
fair to the early comers who should not be punished by 
"long waiting" for the delinquent ones. Open each 
meeting with a song, followed by reading of the 
Scriptures and prayer. If your regular chaplain is not a 
minister, let him occasionally make way for the minister, 
if present, and also occasionally turn the prayer over to 
some white-headed brother in the audience. Let 
another song follow the prayer, and then, after reading 
the minutes of the previous meeting, transact all 
necessary business as quickly as is consistent with doing 
it well. When this is attended to, then have another 



274 • SUNSHINE. 

song and proceed with the regular programme. This 
should consist, where home talent alone is used, of short 
speeches (save where a regular lecture by some citizen 
is announced), songs, instrumental music (if possible), 
readings, recitations, dialogues (by the little folks), and 
debates. Limit your short speeches to ten minutes, but 
if a speaker is "holding the audience" and doing good, 
don't cut him short; let him finish. "A bird in the 
hand," etc., and the next speaker may not be as 
serviceable. The president must learn how to "call a 
man down" without hurting his feelings w T hen he is 
overstepping his time and become prosy. Brother 
Francis Murphy has a happy faculty of doing this: 
"Don't say another word, brother, you can't improve on 
that. Glory to God for that speech! Thank you, dear, 
take this chair;" and before the man knows w r hat is 
happening, he is shut off, set down in Murphy's own 
chair and is imagining all kinds of pleasant things 
concerning himself. 

If your ministers are down on the programme, tell 
them to talk temperance and not preach a sermon. The 
boys can hear the sermon on Sunday, but at the 
temperance meeting they w T ant just what they come 
there for. Put in as much of the gospel as you please 
but don't get on to doctrinal points, creedism and 
religious theses, diatribes and the like. Be as good- 
humored as you can. It is easier to laugh a man from 
behind a whisky barrel than to drive him out with frowns 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 275 

and blows. If you are blessed with a funny man in your 
organization, use him as often as possible, and after 
every dull and prosy effort, put on somebody whom you 
know to be full of life and who always pleases the boys. 

After every speech let the audience rise and sing, and 
offer the pledge. If you wait till the last of the 
meeting for pledge-signing, the argument of some 
speaker may be forgotten and the man on the verge of 
signing lost. Don't run your meetings too late. An 
hour and a half to two hours is long enough, and if they 
are kept up longer you will soon begin to notice a 
falling off in the size of your audience. Make as much 
of a change each night as possible, trying to obtain new 
speakers, debaters, etc., and new vocal and instrumental 
soloists. In a word, make your meetings "just as good 
as a show," and it will not be long until the very class 
you are working for will come to them to be amused and 
entertained and God will send the words of soberness to 
some speaker that will catch them and bring them to 
the pledge table. 

If you have engaged a foreign speaker to lecture for 
your union, and this should be done as often as possible, 
and whenever the interest in home talent begins to flag, 
let each friend of the cause make of himself or herself 
a committee of one to advertise his coming. Especially 
take the news to the drinkers that some one they will 
like to hear is to speak on a certain night. Get notices 
in the weekly or daily papers aud have them read from 



276 SUNSHINE. 

the different pulpits on Sabbath. When the day comes, 
have some one meet him at the train, and always send 
him word where he is to stop, if at a private house or a 
hotel, so that if nobody meets him he will know where 
to go. Likewise, in writing to your lecturer tell him 
how to reach your town, the name of the railroad or 
roads he is to travel on and what time the train arrives. 
When the hour for meeting comes, let some one go after 
the speaker and escort him to the hall. When every- 
thing is ready and all business finished, let the choir 
sing a good, rousing song, full of vim and life. Don't 
sing "Am I a soldier of the cross," or any other song as 
slow as a Tennessee freight train, that would throw a 
chill over a wooden man. Save that song and others 
like it for the church service, but sing "Hold the Fort," 
"Only an Armor Bearer," "Let the Lower Lights be 
Burning," or any other song full of magnetism, and then 
give the speaker a good introduction. Don't introduce 
him as a speaker was once introduced in Illinois ; 

"Men and women, I introduce Mr. Jones to the 
crowd. He'll talk to you." 

If such an introduction had been given the writer, he 
would have talked to the introducer before he talked to 
the "crowd." Say a few pleasant words, devoid of 
flattery, and that will at once put the speaker at his 
ease, and then give way. In the course of his talk 
if he says anything particularly good, let the president 
start the applause, for nothing pleases a speaker so well 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 277 

as to hear his auditors approve of his views by clapping 
of the hands, etc. Don't sit like an array of Stoughton 
bottles for an hour or more without changing the 
muscles of your face. Such an audience throws a 
coldwater deluge over any man and quickly stops the 
fountain of inspiration. If he does you good and pleases 
you, let him know it by your smiles and applause. 

As soon as he has finished his talk, bring the audience 
to their feet and start a lively song. Have the song 
picked out and ready so that when the speaker is done 
and the audience is charged with zeal and ready for 
work, they won't have a chance to cool off and forget 
the speaker's logic and argument while a lazy choir is 
hunting a song. Start right off singing and if the choir 
is not ready let some one in the audience strike up 
"Hold the Fort/' and then call for signers. Send 
missionaries down the aisles to talk to "the boys" and 
endeavor to bring them forward or, with paper and 
pencil, to take their names where they stand. 

If, when all this is over, a collection is to be taken up 
for the speaker, don't commence talking about it as if he 
were a poor devil just out of the alms-house and needing 
a few cents to take him to the next town. Don't say 
anything about charity, but ask for the collection to pay 
a just debt. The speaker has fully earned all he will 
get, whether it is a dollar or fifty, just as fully as though 
he had done a day's work in shop or field. If possible, 
let some one take the pennies and nickels of the 



278 SUNSHINE. 

collection and replace them with bills, and if the 
amount raised is not up to the contract price don't ask 
the speaker to stand the loss ; stand it yourselves. 
Kaise it either out of your treasury or, if that is empty, 
out of your own pockets. 

The author is to-day the loser of a goodly amount of 
money he worked hard for and which was to be sent to 
him "as soon as the committee met." The committees 
have never met, he presumes, and so he has been com- 
pelled to pay his own expenses to labor for the citizens 
of a dozen communities, who were not themselves earnest 
enough in the work to pay him the contract price. 
This is unfair and a disgrace to any temperance 
organization. 

Don't employ any man who comes into your town 
and calls himself a temperance lecturer. There are 
dozens of irresponsible, unsafe men who have drifted 
into this work to make a living out of it, without a 
thought of returning labor for dollars. With a few 
stereotyped ideas, as old as the everlasting hills, they 
make loud pretensions, only to show by a single talk 
their falsitv. Without a record of successful labor, or 
without credentials from State organizations let these 
men alone. If they need help, help them as you would 
any other applicant for charity. The State organizations 
give credentials to all workers accredited with successful 
labors and good characters, and there are enough men 
bearing these credentials to fill the rostrums fbr all our 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 279 

local organizations. Of course, a man bearing letters of 
recommendation from other unions, from ministers, etc., 
and who bears the impress of a gentleman, need not be 
turned away, but the so-called "tramp lecturers," who 
have infested the work since it first began are to be let 
alone. Many of them raise a few dollars only to spend 
it in drink, and others are unsafe men to bring into 
Christian, moral circles. 

Furthermore, don't expect your lecturer to do all the 
work. If he is not assisted by the brothers and sisters 
of the organization, he will do little good, whether he 
possesses the eloquence of a Gough or not. Let all the 
members hunt up the drinking men by day and 
endeavor to get their promise to attend the night 
meeting and when they are gotten to the hall, be 
friendly with them. As they come awkwardly in, let 
some one take them by the arm and get them as near 
front as possible. If they feel like slipping out, then, 
before the meeting is over, they will fear to face the 
battery of eyes at the back of the house. And when the 
speaker is done let the "missionaries" go at once to these 
men and kindly endeavor to get their signatures. This 
work is best done by the home workers, the ones whom 
the drinkers know and have confidence in. They would 
hold back from the kind words of the speaker, arguing 
that he was working for money, and was not going to 
live in their town and would soon be up and away and 
forget all about them. Of course this argument is only 



280 SUNSHINE. 

partly true, but nevertheless it interferes with the 
earnest desire of the temperance advocate to save his 
fallen brothers. But when the citizens of a town go to 
the drinking boy or man, speak of their interest in him, 
tell him that they will be always watching him and 
taking an interest in helping him along, they will find 
it not such a hard task to get his pledge. He will argue 
that the citizens of his town are interested in him, they 
can help him to w r ork and society, and when he finds 
their hearts not closed against him he will be glad to 
take a step that will lift him nearer to them. 

And when you have got his name to the pledge don't 
drop him once and for all, failing to speak to him when 
you meet him on the street, or to shake him by the hand, 
or bow to him as you pass. Stop and have a chat with him 
occasionally, ask him how he gets along, drop in and see 
him at his w r ork, treat him as you would like some one 
to treat your boy, if he were miles away from the mother 
and father heart, and it won't be long until you will 
have made the poor man or boy firm as a rock in his new 
faith. Invite him to your church, and if possible let him 
sit in your pew. It will not hurt you a bit if his clothes are 
stained with honest toil, while yours are broadcloth or 
silk. God does not weigh clothes so much as hearts, after 
all. Keep up this interest in your pledge signers and 
your work will be permanent, but where the man ia 
forgotten as soon as he has signed the pledge the work 
will only be ephemeral. 



HOW TO CONDUCT TEMPERANCE MEETINGS. 281 

Other ideas as to the conduct of your meetings will be 
constantly presenting themselves, and it is advisable to 
change your plans as often as possible, if each change 
tends to increasing the interest in the meetings. It is 
not best to run too long in one channel lest all concerned 
lose their zeal and earnestness. In running meetings 
with home talent let the children have a place on the 
programme occasionally. Don't have a debate each 
meeting night, and don't have speeches each night, save 
a short one in closing the meeting in the shape of an 
exhortation to sign. Let an occasional meeting take the 
shape of a musical and elocutionary entertainment, the 
latter selections consisting chiefly of temperance poems 
and prose articles, and then close the meeting with an 
exhortation to sign the pledge. Have as much variety in 
your meetings as possible ; as much spice and good 
humor and all the zeal and earnestness your community 
can bring to bear and your labor will be crowned with 
success. Don't give up your meeting every once in a 
while on any frivolous pretext, such as a show in town, a 
church festival, or the warm weather. Whenever the 
saloons close up because of a show in town, a church 
festival, or the warm weather it will be time for the 
temperance meetings to follow suit, but as long as the 
grog-shop is constantly open so must our temperance 
meetings be constantly open as well, and the more work for 
God and humanity the fewer souls for King Alcohol and 
Satan. 



• CHAPTER XXIV. 

REVIVALS^ CAMP-MEETINGS^ ETC. 

fN the present manner of conducting the temperance 
work, there is much that is analogous to the plan of 
carrying on the regular church work. Revivals of 
temperance are now as frequent as revivals of religion, 
while during the last summer there were about as many 
temperance camp-meetings as camp-meetings engineered 
more directly by the church, in the interests of the 
church alone. Grove-meetings, or out-door meetings, 
during the warm weather, are likewise becoming plente- 
ous, and are not only helpful to the cause, but likewise 
provide a day's enjoyment to the workers. 

A few general directions as to the best plans of car- 
rying on these special meetings will be of service to the 
cause, and the ideas advanced in this chapter are taken 
from the meetings of like character attended and man- 
aged by the writer during the past three years. 

He has been constantly employed during that time ' 
in what are generally called revival meetings, mean- 
ing nightly series of meetings, lasting from one to four 



REVIVALS, CAMP-MEETINGS, ETC. 283 

weeks. These meetings, with single lectures, grove- 
meeting and camp-meeting labors, together with open- 
ing up the work in new fields, have occupied' his nights 
and days for three years, on an average of three hundred 
days per year. 

When you desire to revive the work in your midst, 
choose a time which will not conflict with church revi- 
vals, or meetings of other kinds, liable to carry off a 
portion of your audience. No particular season of the 
year is especially set apart for the revival work ; the best 
time being when the work needs enlivening, be it winter 
or summer. Choose your speaker, and send him word 
that he is wanted in good time. Then commence 
advertising the coming series of meetings. Tell about 
them in your county papers; send word to unions in 
your vicinity, asking their help. Get the churches inter- 
ested, and commence also by subscription raising a fund 
to carry on the meetings. In soliciting funds for carry- 
ing on the work, always carry with you a paper, appro- 
priately headed, on which the donors are to sign their 
names, and the amounts they will give. The American 
people like to sign petitions, papers, etc., and are ready 
to do so, even if it takes a little cash to make the signa- 
ture good. This signing hobby is one of the peculiarities 
of the great American public. In starting out with your 
paper, don't offer it to the first man you meet. This is 
suicidal — financially — for, as the paper is started, so it 
will be kept up. For instance, if the first signer gives 



284 SUNSHINE. 

twenty-five or fifty cents, the succeeding subscribers 
will see no necessity for "raising" the first man's gift, 
and your paper will be filled with small donations. But, 
if the original gift be a large one, those whose names 
follow the first one will endeavor to give as much as he 
out of an honorable rivalry, and the fall from dollars 
to cents will not take place until that class of your 
citizens, who can not really afford dollars, wjll be 
reached. Go, then, with your paper, first of all, to 
the wealthy, liberal citizen, who has helped you in other 
times, and who gives a ten- or a twenty-dollar bill with 
a free heart and hand. Get his name first, and tell him, 
also, that you want his donation to be a pattern for fol- 
lowing ones, so he will (in all good harmony) make it as 
large as possible, for the fun of seeing how many of his 
neighbors will duplicate it in size and amount. Then, 
after catching your big fish, throw out your hook and. 
line for the smaller ones. Or the fund can be raised by 
an entertainment, or festival, previous to the commence- 
ment of the work. It is not a good plan to take up a col- 
lection every night of the series, as the people, imagining 
the collections are ten times as large as they really 
are, begin to wonder what becomes of the money. If 
possible, get your business men (the hardest class to 
reach, as a rule,) interested in the work, and invite them 
to the meetings. Have all the preparations made, such 
as place for meeting each night, pledges and ribbons on 
hand, committees to circulate the former and pin on the 



REVIVALS, CAMP-MEETINGS, ETC. 285 

latter; get your choir selected and trained beforehand, 
so that nothing has to be done when the meetings have 
once commenced. If the interest is still at fever-heat 
at the end of your speaker's contract, signers still joining, 
and the people ready to listen and work a week longer, 
re-engage the speaker for another week, if possible; and 
if he can not be re-engaged, get another one, or carry the 
work on with home talent as long as any good is being 
accomplished. If all the money needed has not been 
raised beforehand, you can generally raise the balance 
needed by winding up the meetings with an entertain- 
ment, social, or festival, the last night of your speaker's 
stay, and thus send him off with a warm feeling for your 
people, and his pocket-book heavier-complexioned than 
when he came to you. He will tell his brothers in the 
work of his good treatment in your community, and thus 
you will have no trouble in finding reliable workers, 
ready at your call. Also, if he has given satisfaction, 
don't be afraid to say so on paper. Write out a testimo- 
nial of his abilities, signed by the officers of your unions 
and the ministers of the different churches, who took 
part in the work. 

Without any desire to parade his own record in this 
work, the writer only desires to state that the testimo- 
nials he has received from the unions, and for which he 
has labored, are very dear to him, and possess a value 
that dollars and cents can not measure. They are to be 
kept, year after year, and, when the children are grown, 



286 SUNSHINE. 

be hopes to show them these letters of approval as a part 
of his dearest treasures, and as a record of what their 
father tried to do, when yet they were nestled against 
their mother's heart, to remove danger and temptation 
from their pathway. 

Again, when your speaker's labors among you are con- 
cluded, send a letter to State headquarters, as to 
his abilities, " rendering unto Caesar those things 
which are Caesar's," and also recommend him, by letter 
and otherwise, to unions near you. If he has done your 
people good service, he can do others good service, and 
the fact should be known. Also, send him copies of 
weekly papers noting his meetings. 

In carrying on a temperance camp-meeting, more 
preparation is necessary. First, decide on the length of 
time it is to be kept up ; from four days to two weeks is 
the limit. County fair grounds are the best for caimp- 
meeting purposes, as they are provided with buildings, 
booths, water, and other conveniences. In many parts 
of the county are camp-meeting grounds, owned by 
religious organizations, which can be rented by the tem- 
perance unions. As much money as possible should be 
raised by subscription, and then let the different privi- 
leges be sold or rented. Advertise the various privileges 
you have for sale or rent, in the county papers, and take 
the largest bid. These privileges consist, as a general 
thing, of tents, dining-hall, candy and fruit stands, ice 
cream, candy and popcorn-ball stands, " flying horses," 



REVIVALS, CAMP-MEETINGS, ETC. 287 

shooting targets, cloak and hat rooms, lunch stands, 
stabling privileges, privilege to sell photographs of tem- 
perance workers, badges, etc. Commence correspond- 
ence with speakers in good time, and endeavor to get 
workers who are fitted for the camp-meeting work. 
You w T ant neither too few nor too many. From four to 
six speakers, to be on the grounds from the first meeting 
to the last, should be engaged, and these are to be assisted 
by the ministers of your community, officers of the 
organization, home talent, and visitors from abroad. 
It is also a good plan to engage one or more celebrated 
lecturers, to lecture on certain nights, as a means of 
drawing an increased audience, and thus swelling the 
gate receipts. As a general thing, five to ten cents 
admission is enough to charge at the gate, and, if pos- 
sible, make no extra charge for vehicles. 

Your regular speakers should be religious men, of 
unblemished reputation and high standing in the w T ork, 
and each differing from the others in his style of talking 
and working. For instance, one should be a regular 
camp-meeting exhorter; another, logical and argument- 
ative; a third, humorous and spirited; and a fourth, a 
man who can "fill in" the other speeches with short, 
lively and appropriate talks, and w r ho is a power work* 
ing in the audience, in personal hand-to-hand work. 

Have a good choir with enough voices in it to sound 
well in the open air. If possible, have a number of 



288 SUNSHINE. 

instruments in your choir. Too much music at a camp- 
meeting is just right. 

Lights should be provided to illumine the grounds at 
night, a number of reliable men sworn in as a special 
police force to preserve order, and nothing should be 
left undone, previous to the opening of your meeting, 
which would tend to the satisfaction of your audience. 
In many localities, last year, the unions managing the 
camp-meetings reserved all privileges themselves, buying 
the candies, lunch, etc., and putting the profits in the 
treasury. They also had under their direction the dining- 
hall and boarded the speakers on the grounds, the ladies 
of the union furnishing the necessary bedding. 

In preparing the programmes of the meetings, have a 
long speech each night — the audiences being larger at 
night than during the day — followed or preceded by 
shorter speeches by the other workers and visitors, 
changing the speakers about ot each meeting. As a gen- 
eral thing, the services are held at 10 A, M. until noon, 
the two hours being given up to praise, prayer and 
experience. At 2, in the afternoon, after a half hour 
of prayer and praise, the meeting is carried on as a 
regular temperance meeting; and at night, beginning 
at 7:30 o'clock, with a half-hour experience-meeting, 
devoted to two-minute talks by the boys, have the 
more elaborate effort of the day. Each meeting 
should be opened by reading of the Scriptures and 
prayer. Get the sisters to take as large a share in the 



REVIVALS, CAMP-MEETINGS, ETC. 289 

meetings as they will, for woman's voice is never out of 
place when praying to God for his children, and when 
talking to them of the better life. Some of the finest 
prayers and talks the writer ever listened to he heard at 
the temperance camp-meetings, in the summer and fall 
of 1879, by the faithful sisters in attendance. 

During the camp-meeting labors of the past year, our 
cause was not only materially strengthened, but many 
of our pledge signers were brought very near to the 
throne of Christ. And this should be the effort of the 
workers as much as possible, not only to save their 
brothers from the sin and sorrow of drink, but to direct 
them to a sure means of strength — the Rock, Christ 
Jesus. 

The suggestions above, with those to be obtained from 
the wisdom and experience of ministers and others, will 
enable the friends of the cause, the writer hopes, to carry 
the work of saving men out in the open air, under the 
leafy trees and the blue skies, where, amid the songs of 
birds and the fragrance of woods and fields, words of 
cheer and songs of praise may be heard going heaven- 
ward for God's blessing, during the days of warmth and 
sunshine of many coming years. 

The work of arranging for a grove-meeting requires 
but little of the time and trouble necessary for perfecting 
plans for a camp-meeting. Each organization that can 
do so should hold an open-air meeting each year. If 
your union was organized in warm weather, let it be an 



290 SUXSHLNE. 

anniversary meeting, on the recurrence of the day of your 
original organization. Find a pleasant, cleanly grove, 
not so far from town but that it can be walked to; 
or, if this can not be obtained, see to it that some 
arrangements are perfected for the transportation of 
all people free who can aot pay — if a charge be made 
for carrying the public to the grove. Advertise the 
meeting all over the county; invite other unions near 
you to attend en masse; and it is never a bad plan to pre- 
sent a banner to the local organization sending the 
most people to the meeting in procession. Have a brass 
band employed to furnish music during the day, and to 
head the procession from the town to the grove. Sell 
the candy, lunch, and lemonade stands to the highest 
bidder, or run them for the organization. This can 
be done with little expense, as most local dealers will 
furnish candies, nuts, and fruits, on commission, taking 
back, of course, the residue not sold. Have, in the lat- 
ter case, appropriate persons selected to sell the articles. 
The day before the meeting, send a party of sturdy 
brothers to the grove to erect the speaker's staud, 
and lay the seats ; in the afternoon, let the good sis- 
ters decorate the stands with cedar, ribbons, flowers, 
and flags. Early in the morning of " the great day," 
send out to the grove the organ, carpet for the stand, 
framed pictures to hang on the posts, a table, one or 
more stands to set bouquets upon, a pitcher and glass 
for the speakers, and a Bible. 



291 



Employ for speakers two or three well-known tem- 
perance talkers. If you can, get the one who organized 
your society to deliver the anniversary address. Let 
one of your speakers, at least, be one well-known 
throughout your neighborhood, one to whom your people 
love to listen ; and, if you have another, get one who 
stands high in his profession as a talker and a 
worker, who you have reason, from his reputation, 
to believe will give satisfaction to his audience. It is 
best to select your speakers from old friends (the early 
lecturers among the organizations represented), who will 
draw their friends to hear them, and new speakers whose 
reputation will bring many out to hear their words of 
wisdom and cheer concerning our common enemy. Let 
the Scriptures be read and prayer offered by your local 
ministers, preceded and followed by music by the band 
and choir, after which a few words of welcome from the 
president will be in order. If you have commenced 
promptly at 10 o'clock, this will allow time for one 
speech before dinner; and, after this, close with a song. 
At the dinner, see to it that no visitor is unfed. Find 
out just at what table to place the speakers, the clergy, 
and members of the band, and then divide the basketless 
visitors around the different tables. Let plenty of time 
be given to the meal and for social intercourse afterward, 
calling the people together at 1:30 or 2 o'clock by a 
selection by the band, and then introduce your principal 
speaker, giving him plenty of time, and when he is 



292 SUNSHINE. 

through, after more music, bring forward your other 
talkers. When your last foreign speaker is through, it 
is a good plan to have a few words from prominent 
workers of visiting unions, telling how they are getting 
along in the work, and also short speeches from the 
" reformed men " and from old citizens, ministers, and 
others. 

It frequently happens that the meeting is carried on at 
night in the grove by the aid of lanterns and lamps, 
although, in view of the extra trouble it incurs, and the 
danger from change of atmosphere and dew, it is doubt- 
less just as well to close the day with a temperance 
"love feast " in the church or hall, where, with short and 
lively speeches, good music, and pledge signing, a pleas- 
ant day may be royally terminated. 




CHAPTER XXV. 

OUR WORK — ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 

'HEN we consider the fact that out of a popu- 
lation of forty-four millions of people, eleven 
millions have signed the tetnperance pledge 
since the glorious crusade of 1873, one is struck with 
astonishment at the magnitude of this gospel tem- 
perance movement, and an endeavor is at once made to 
account for the success of the work. This is easily 
done. The Washingtonian movement of nearly four 
decades ago was a movement founded on man's honor, 
and, although its work was grand, it could not compete 
with a movement which had God for its foundation, and 
love and charity for its superstructure. More than all 
things else, this fact explains the success of our present 
temperance work. We have taken God in our consti- 
tution. This difference can be seen at a glance, by a 
comparison of the two pledges — one being the Wash- 
ingtonian pledge, and the other the pledge of the 
National Christian Temperance Union, commonly known 
as the " Murphy Pledge." The Reynolds, or red rib- 



294 SUNSHINE. 

bon, pledge has oof the compactness and force of 
expression of the blue ribbon, or National Christian 
Temperance Union, but. like it, recognizes God as the 
sure means of strength to the signer: 



NATIONAL 

CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION. 

-With Mjllice towaei None, ajcb Chasetv fob all..'' 

J, the undersigned , do P L E "D G E my word and honor, 

GOD HELPING- ME, 

Attain from ALL intoxieatv.: oarage, and that 1 wili, by 

all honorable means, encourage others to abstain. 



whose names are annexed, desirous of forming a society for our 
mutual benefit, and to guard ernicious practice, which is injurious 

health, stand i mg and fa m U in . do pledge ourselves, 

'.EXTLEXiy. 
77tat we wiU not drink any spirituous or malt liquors, wine or cider. 



OUR WORK — ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 295 

Iii the vast difference between the two expressions, 
"as gentlemen" in the one pledge, and "God helping 
me" in the other, we can readily see one of the principal 
causes of the difference in the results of the two works. 
The heart and soul, hand-and-pocketbook work of the 
present movement has also been in its favor. The many 
speakers constantly on the platform upholding our cause 
have been men and women of heart who, each and all, 
spoke only words of love and charity, and carried them 
out as well. Even the saloon keepers have received 
little abuse in this work. They have been spoken of in 
the kindest terms, the while their traffic has been told of 
in all its hideous features, with no uncertain sounds. 

The brotherly love of the present movement has been 
in its favor from the start. The very first principle in- 
culcated was that no man was so low but that he could 
find friends to help him and hearts open to him, if he 
would but come forward. Men who had heard nothing 
but oaths and curses and jeers for years, until all 
that was good in them had been sunken so low that 
they believed it entirely gone, trembled when fine- 
looking men and tender women took them by the hand 
and called them "brother." Chords long untouched 
were softened as by the fingers of a mighty magician, 
and underneath all the outer crust of crime and degra- 
dation, the one spot of untouched good was reached 
by the touch of love. The beggar, in his rags, jostled 
the merchant in his broadcloth; and, strangest of all, the 



296 SUNSHINE. 

merchant did not change his seat, but, instead, turned 
with words of kindness to his uncouth neighbor. Love 
does not long plead in vain in whatsoever work it engages, 
and soon the lower classes — lowered not by nature and 
birth, for nature knows no caste— but lowered by drink 
and wrong, found themselves unconsciously being raised 
upward, and the elevation brought with it not only a 
desire to stay higher, but the strength to keep the new 
position. The temperance advocates, led on by Murphy 
and Reynolds, preached the new gospel of love wher- 
ever they went, and the magic doctrines so long unheard 
by the drink-cursed men of our land opened a pathway 
to the heart, and the heart soon yielded to the sunshine 
of new -and true friends, holding the pledge in one hand 
and friendship in the other. Thus made new men, the 
Bible verse, " If ye have received the gift as freely min- 
ister unto others, as stewards of the manifold grace of 
God," presented itself to their minds and hearts; and 
"having received the gift" of a new and higher life, 
these men gladly cried out the story in the highways and 
byways, and ministered unto those who were suffering as 
they had suffered. This has been, from its inception of 
the work, one of the causes of success. The saved men 
could not be selfish; they wanted all to enjoy the gifts 
of sobriety and friendship, and so they hunted up their 
neighbors and told the story. Fathers went from the 
temperance meeting to hunt up and bring in their sons; 
sons sought out fathers to be touched with the words of 



OUR WORK ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 297 

love, and made happy; men sought their old companions, 
and thus gathered these around them in the new life as 
in the old; and, arm in arm, saved manhood journeyed, 
preaching the temperance gospel. This " tells the story," 
and seeking to divide "the gift" has been the means of 
increasing our numbers wonderfully, as each man con- 
verted has been sent into the world a teacher and 
preacher to others. 

The original start of this work was not the result of 
a carefully-laid plan, but rather the direct result of the 
inspiration of the moment. Truly, the eleven million 
signers of to-day point clearly to two facts : One, that 
no seed is so tiny but that in its perfection of growth it 
may afford shelter for birds and beasts, or men ; and the 
other, that the hearts of American womanhood are full, 
not only of tenderest love, but unquestioned and un- 
daunted heroism as well. 

The salient features of the woman's crusade were 
advocated by Doctor Dio Lewis, of Boston, twenty-three 
years ago, and the work was really carried on, in a spas- 
modic fashion, with cheering results, in Massachusetts, 
Illinois, Michigan, and New Hampshire, that long since, 
but it was in Ohio that the crusade of victory was finally 
born out of long suffering and aching hearts. 

In a little country town, near Hillsboro, was seen the 
first band of praying women, struggling through snow 
and slush, to save their loved ones. Then the Doctor 
went to Hillsboro and Washington Court House, Ohio, 



298 SUNSHINE. 

carrying the story of woman's heroism in the town he 
had just left. The women of Hillsboro and Washington 
Court House could do what other women were doing, 
and they did. Forgetting all else but the voice of God 
speaking within them, they girded themselves round 
about with prayer and faith, and sought the grog-shops 
of their native towns. One by one was visited, and 
prayer and song alternately raised upon the air. 

In the latter town was the first victory gained, when 
John C. Van Pelt rolled out his whisky barrels and 
himself drove in their heads with an ax, letting the 
poisoned fluid run at will along the gutters of the 
street. Along every telegraph wire in the land the 
story flashed, and in the early light of the next day 
were seen a hundred thousand women, all over the land, 
mingling their prayers and songs with the Christmas 
bells, in front of the saloons that so long had cursed 
their communities. State after State joined the army, 
the women fighting their way backed by the approval 
of their husbands and fathers. Saloon after saloon closed 
doors, thousands of men signed the total-abstinence 
pledge, and not until the Christmas of 1873 had been fol- 
lowed by three others did the crusade finally die down, 
and then only to give birth to the present National 
Christian Temperance Union and the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union, brother and sister — husband and 
wife — in the great movement of reform. 

Of the latter organization, manned (to use an 



OUR WORK — ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 299 

undoubted Hibernicism) entirely by women, too much 
can not be said. Every State and Territory in our Union 
have auxiliary branches ; thousands of tracts, papers and 
books, have been printed and distributed by the mem- 
bers, and nearly one thousand papers in our country 
contain each week a column on temperance, managed by 
the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union ; meet- 
ings are held weekly, grand conventions, State and 
national, each year ; and in this manner the spirit of the 
crusade is kept alive, and will be kept alive, as long as 
womanhood is what it has been since the first cry of 
sorrow was raised on earth, as the first mother's heart 
mourned for a boy lost. 

The National Christian Temperance Union, an out- 
growth of the crusade proper, but more generally 
accredited to the so-called Murphy — blue ribbon — and 
Eeynolds — red ribbon — revivals, lacks the excellent 
organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance 
Union ; but this it will gain with age. The formation 
of the National Christian Temperance Union is by many 
accredited to Francis Murphy and his co-laborers, in 
1876 and 1877, but this is, the writer thinks, a mistake. 

The crusade of 1873 was as the plowing of good 
ground for the seedsmen. It was the crusade that 
opened the way, prepared everything for the coming 
of the later events, and then stopped awhile to rest 
and fall into the procession as it passed. As the 
Phoenix, a fabled bird of old, in giving birth to its 



300 SUNSHINE. 

young, gave up its life, so did the crusade, dying, leave 
its blessing and its impress upon the gospel temperance 
work of the blue and red ribbons, and without this 
power, it is the writer's firm belief, the latter movements 
would not have occurred. 

To-day, all over our land, the sound of the temperance 
meetings is heard in city and country, and the pledge is 
still being signed by thousands as each week follows its 
predecessor in the past. Hundreds of men and women 
of ability and character are going up and down the 
land, raising the colored banners of sobriety and carrying 
sunshine and plenty to manhood fallen in the mire. 

The result of their labors is easily noticed not only in 
business and in society, but in our courts as well. There 
are thousands of happy homes in our land to-day, made 
so by the crusade and its children, the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union and the National Christian Tem- 
perance Union. Men who, ten years ago, were drunk- 
ards, without friends or money, to-day sit under their 
own vine and fig-tree, bathing in the sunshine of the 
new life, blessed with the happy faces of wives and 
children, whose hearts are constantly singing songs of 
victory and joy. Thus has society been improved, legit- 
imate business strenghtened, and manhood and woman- 
hood and, above all, childhood blessed and glorified. 
Further, the church of God has been strengthened as 
never before. Reformed men have asked to be allowed 
to take a step higher, and have stepped to the throne of 



OUK WORK — ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 301 

God. Of eleven thousand pledge signers in one Ohio 
city, three thousand have joined the church of Christ. 

Again, a change has taken place in our courts. Where 
a few years ago, a whisky dealer and violator of State 
laws could not be punished therefor, because of no 
needed public sentiment to stand as his accuser, to-day, 
in every State, the saloon keeper trembles in his shoes, 
and is in constant danger of facing a court of justice, 
knowing that if he is brought before the bar his punish- 
ment is swift and certain. True, there are many locali- 
ties where the saloon keeper rules all with an iron hand, 
but the march of the temperance army is in his direction, 
and soon the most determined of them all will find their 
business hedged round about with all the law's devices 
for securing its rights and the rights of its wards — the 
people of the land. The day is not far distant when 
local option — the first step to prohibition — will carry the 
day. Then one-half the saloons will be closed, and the 
proprietors can move away and commence themselves 
patronizing their more fortunate brethren, until their 
turn, too, shall come when, from local option and its bless- 
ings, the people of the United States shall go one step 
higher — to complete total abstinence in the manufacture, 
sale, and use of intoxicants. 

To-day, the temperance warfare is more fierce and 
determined than ever. Those who believed it to be an 
ephemeral thing, to exist for a month and then to be for- 
gotten, have acknowledged their mistake, as they see the 



302 SUNSHINE. 

grand army enlarging as each week rolls on and hear 
constantly going up the glad halleluiahs of new victories 
as each sun sets behind the hills of the West to rise again 
and light the eleven million warriors to the next day's 
battle. 

Strengthened by the glad tears of happy wives and 
children, by the heartfelt thanks of saved men and the 
blessings of our Great Captain, the workers are still lift- 
ing the banners high only to furl them when the wires of 
Father Morse tell to all the world of the closing of the last 
drunkard's grave, the last saloon and the last manufactory 
of strong drink on God's fair earth. God is still with his 
people, with an arm not shortened and an ear unclosed. 
The man who stands ready to poison and murder his 
neighbor for paltry dollars may laugh for a little time 
longer, but as surely as the children of Israel had a 
column of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to 
guide them into a land of safety, so is our God ever 
before us giving us grace and strength and courage, and 
bidding us be of good cheer for his millions will in good 
time be led into a land where milk and honey shall 
constantly flow, where sunshine and plenty will be over 
all, and where King Alcohol will be buried deep down 
under the curses of a saved people for eternity and 
a day. 




CHAPTER XXVI. 
l'envoi. 

"S it not about time you said something concerning 
'sunshine' in your book to explain its title ?" 
said our publisher's amiable proof-reader to the 
author, as with manuscript in hand he entered the office 
at about the time printer and proof-reader had reached 
the twentieth chapter. 

Perhaps a word or two in regard to our title would 
not be out of place in this concluding chapter, although 
it may be that long since the book has been dropped for 
good by the reader, who may be, for all the writer 
knows, earnestly endeavoring to forget that such a book 
had ever been written, or at least purchased by himself 
after it was written, If such be the case these words 
of explanation w T ill at least do no hurt, and if they 
do nothing else they may satisfy the amiable proof- 
reader aforesaid. 

That genial wit, Charles Farrar Browne (Artemus 
Ward), during his first years of lecturing convulsed his 
audience with the witticisms of a lecture entitled, "Sixty 



304 SUNSHINE. 

Minutes in Africa," and the only reference made to 
Africa in the entire lecture was in the statement that 
that country produced three kinds of roses — "the red 
rose, the yellow rose and the neg-roes." He explained 
at the conclusion of the "sixty minutes" that the title 
had nothing whatever to do w T ith the lecture, a fact 
the audience had already found out. 

The title of our imperfect "mosaic" may be said by 
some to bear about the same relation to the book as 
Browne's lecture title bore to the lecture proper, and yet 
the writer would hope that his readers have not, as a 
man, reached such a conclusion. Some time since we 
read a book written by a reformed man on the subject 
of temperance, but instead of finding its pages devoted 
to the grandeur of the new life they were found to be 
full of a misantrophe's views of the world in general as 
seen through eyes dimmed by a long series of 
debaucheries. The new life was but little improvement 
on the old, for friends were few and the memories of the 
past were so darksome and terrible as to keep the writer, 
reformed as he claimed to be, constantly under the dark 
clouds of a wrongly-lived earlier life. The very title 
of the book was suggestive of clouds and of gloom. 

The writer, as he has told his readers, lost a goodly 
portion of his life through an appetite for strong drink, 
but he did not lose all of life nor all of hope nor all the 
bright hours vouchsafed him in the great gift of life. 
Though clouds hovered over and about him for a time, 



i/envoi. 305 

there came sunshine breaking through them at last, and 
since that first moment of the dawning of a better life 
and light his life has been full of sunshine, flowers and 
friends. In the present book an attempt has been made to 
prove to those who have gone astray that a return to the 
better life would bring back all the old-time hours of 
gladness and plenty, and that but the giving up of the 
old evil associations was necessary to exchange clouds for 
sunshine. The work as such may prove a failure, but 
the fact still remains that for the man earnestly desiring 
and trying to reform there are sunshine, flowers and 
friends along every step of the causeway of life. The 
past and its gloom can be forgotten if the present but 
turn the steps of the slave toward a future of true 
manhood. 

The title of this book, then, is but a synonym for the 
better life — the life of sobriety and rectitude that will 
bring every man out of shadow into sunshine, out of 
darkness into light, out of crime and poverty and shame 
into happiness, prosperity and manhood — rays of a 
spiritual sunshine that, in God's good time, will surely 
shine for all here and hereafter. 

Looking at the completed w T ork the author, whose 
honesty has never been questioned (owing to his years 
of active newspaper work, in which truth-tellers only 
ever succeed), can but remark that viewed as a work of 
art, "Sunshine" will never rise higher than a tea-store 
chromo; viewed solely on its merits "Sunshine" does 



306 SUNSHINE. 

not seem to have been written by Macaulay, Dickens or 
Scott, Queen Victoria or even the Sweet Singer of 
Michigan. It has many imperfections, but they are 
put in as extras and the binding has been ordered of the 
very best as an offset to the literary deficiencies. This, 
the author and publisher firmly believe, should satisfy 
the most callous-hearted critic in the United States or 
New Jersey. 

When the reader becomes acquainted with the fact 
that during the writing of "Sunshine'* the author has 
traveled thousands of miles, lecturing from one to four 
times a day, writing at any hour he could rob from 
lecturing and rest, sometimes in the early hours of the 
morning when all the world slept and only the stars 
looked down in wonderment at seeing so much good 
white paper and the best kerosene being wasted; some- 
times when neuralgia was testing all the Christianity 
the writer possessed; and again at times when the 
children next door were holding a musical jubilee with 
seven mixed voices, three drums, two horns and a 
trumpet, he (the reader) will rather look fondly upon 
these imperfections and perhaps forget them in the 
blinding tears the author hopes he has called up in 
mentioning so pathetically the neuralgia and the 
jubilee. 

If the above reasons do not, however, satisfy reader 
and critic the former may send his copy of " Sunshine" 
to the heathen in Chicago or elsewhere, and the latter 



i/envoi. 307 

may send us his address and two green stamps and 
receive our blessing by return mail. Could anything be 
fairer ? 

To certain classes of readers our work may contain too 
much "fun," or to be less egotistical, perhaps, too many 
attempts at fun. The writer sat up three nights before 
the book was printed to think up a plan for satisfying 
all who might want more solidity and not so much 
lightness in a work on so serious a subject as the great 
temperance reform. The best plan that presented 
itself was that the objectionable portions of the book be 
scratched over with red ink, leaving only the more 
sober thoughts of the author for his more sedate readers. 
This might spoil the looks of the book, but if 
the copy be paid for the publisher would feel 
satisfied. 

The author believes in indulging in an honest laugh 
as often as he can conveniently do so, always remember- 
ing the fact that man is the only animal to whom a wise 
Creator gave a "laugher," and w r hich must have been 
given for use. He believes that by going through life 
with a song in the heart and a smile on the face he will 
make more friends along the road, and make these 
friends happier than he could by the use of frowns and 
scolding words, and that he will be happier himself. 
Long, sour faces may do for political conventions and 
nitro-glycerine factories, but for the great mass of 
human nature they are life-shorteners and creators 



308 SUNSHINE. 

of constant gloom. Laugh off your sorrows and your 
cares, solemn-faced friend, and see how much more of 
real sunshine you can find in this life for you and 
yours. 

The writer has tried to make his book readable 
enough to be read by boys and young men, so amusing 
them as to keep them at work till the book should be 
finished, and between anecdotes has endeavored to throw 
in a suggestion helpful and strengthening to them. This 
is his explanation for the would-be humor to be found 
between the covers of his book/ If it is not satisfactory, 
the writer can only add that "Baxter's Saints' Best" and 
"Talk to the Unconverted" can still be found at any 
book store, while coffins can be got at any hour, day or 
night, by calling on the undertaker. 

The authors task is nearly ended and but a short 
time will intervene ere his thoughts will be in the hands 
of readers and critics, and whatsoever their verdict may 
be he will reconcile all differences of opinion with the 
one thought of his own earnestness in the writing of the 
book. Without intending to reach the heights of 
authorship, without a thought as to making a name for 
himself, he started in the labor with the one thought of 
putting somewhere between the covers of the book a 
helpful thought and strengthening passage that might 
aid some boy or man, woman or child into a better, 
truer, happier life. He will watch the journey of "Sun- 
shine" to see if it will accomplish this, and if he finds 



i/envoi. 309 

that a single reader has been helped by the thoughts so 
imperfectly jotted down, all the animadversions of critics 
will fall harmlessly against his breastplate of perfect con- 
tent. "Sunshine" will be a complete success if it makes 
one soul happier for a lifetime or for a day. 

And this brings us to a thought concerning the great 
temperance reform of the present. Is it a failure? 
Many men and women do not concede to it any degree 
of success. And w r hy ? 

"Your boasted temperance movement is a failure, as 
usual with such reforms," said one man. 

"Why so?" was the hearer's query in reply. 

"Well, just see how many of your pledge signers have 
gone back to their cups," and he named some half dozen 
who had held firm but a few months. 

Judged thus, the work has been a failure, but those 
half dozen men were by no means all who had signed 
the pledge in the speaker's town. There were dozens 
who had taken their solemn obligations to let strong 
drink alone at the time the half dozen who "went back" 
did so. True, they were not as prominent and well- 
known in society as the half dozen were, but they were 
worth just as much in the scale of manhood, and God 
valued them just as highly. For three years they had 
remained firm and by sobriety had gotten far above their 
olden position, socially, financially and in all other ways. 
Their homes were bright as the summer heavens, wives 
and children were well-fed and dressed, and content and 



310 SUNSHINE. 

happiness sat throned on every face. These facts, 
coupled with the additional fact that the temperance 
reform in the town in question had not by a single dime 
increased the profits of the liquor sellers, while their tills 
had been denied the additional weight of the dollars of 
those dozens that had been reformed, seem to point 
clearly to a success, and a grand one too, in that 
particular locality. And the present reform has been 
a success. If, when all is ended, and the wide earth one 
great God's acre filled with dead millions waiting for 
the day of judgment, it can be found that one of those 
silent dead, and one only, shall by the present movement 
have been made worthy, when all creation rises, to 
stand forever at the right hand of the Judge, though 
these vears of time and toil and thousands of dollars 
expended shall have done nothing else, then will it be 
known and proved that the temperance movement of 
to-day was a success, for one soul saved outweighs the 
riches of worlds. 

Said a prominent State official to the writer: "If you 
keep a drunken man sober ten minutes you've done a 
grand thing." And in such a spirit must this work of 
reform be judged. If a wife can be given a sober 
husband and his children a sober parent for one, two or 
three months, they have been blessed and made happy 
that long at least, and so far the work has been 
successful, but if out of hundreds of signers one man 
shall keep sober all his life and finally be led to the 



i/envoi. 311 

very altar of Christ, what man dare cry out against the 
movement which accomplished so much, even if months 
of time and many dollars were expended in the saving 
of the one man ? 

But there is not a community that has been visited by 
the present tidal wave of temperance that does not 
contain its one and its dozen, and many of them an 
hundred or more, sober men, once drunkards, with 
happy wives and children living in sunshine and amid 
flowers. Many men have been led into the church, and 
though the storms of appetite may blow and the w r inds 
of temptation assail, yet firmly planted on the Rock of 
Ages these men will stand until the last. Is there any 
sign of failure in such results? 

Add to these truths the additional one that the 
temperance reform has not increased in any community 
the liquor dealer's receipts, even if they have not been 
decreased, and the only reply that can be conscientiously 
made to the assertion that the reform movement is a 
failure is, that he who dares assert such a thing is as 
badly mistaken as the ones who at the start of the 
reform predicted that like other reforms it would blaze 
up for a few days and then die out forever. 

Perhaps the doubting Thomases would like yet 
another proof that the work has not been a failure. 
The number of gallons of whisky annually manufactured 
in the United States has been decreasing for the past 
four years, and wherever the great reform has taken firm 



312 SUNSHINE. 

hold the dockets of city and district courts have been 
shortened from five to thirty-five per cent. The 
applications to poor boards for relief have also been 
lessened, as any person desirous of knowing can easily 
discover by applying to the proper source. Put 
all these facts together and cry "failure !" whoever 
dare. 

No honest effort for good has ever been a failure since 
first "Night let her sable mantle down and pinned it with 
a star." The end sought for may not have been 
accomplished, but the effort itself, if it failed in so far as 
another was concerned, certainly made its originator a 
better man or woman, for disinterested labor for others 
has this peculiarity — much as it may do for the relief of 
the one it does more for the other, on the principle 
that "it is better to give than to receive." If the 
temperance reform of the present time has not benefited 
the drunkard and his family (and that it has benefited 
them there can be no question), it has at least made 
those who labored in the cause more fitted to labor on 
among sorrow and sin; made them better acquainted with 
the condition of those of their neighbors among whom 
they had not before moved; quickened their heart-beats 
for suffering humanity, and strengthened their resolutions 
to help others, the while the manner of helping them has 
been clearly pointed out. The seed dropped from the 
farmer's pocket on his way to the field has often brought 
forth its harvest in due time, although it fell upon 



l'envoi. 313 

ground none the best for the purposes of growth and 
increase; and so the many seeds sown in the present 
movement, although a great change has not been already 
brought about, will bud and bloom into harvest in God's 
good time and the question of success or failure can 
better be answered when God shall balance the account 
than now. 

It is not the active workers in the temperance reform 
who cry failure. They constantly see sunshiny faces 
and happy homes brought about through this move- 
ment and hence know what it has accomplished. The 
class of people who ask sneeringly, "What have you 
accomplished?" are the moral Shylocks of the com- 
munity, who, if they ever do invest an action in any 
good cause, expect an increase of one hundred per cent. 
They go to church to advertise themselves, and contribute 
to charitable objects only to get their names in the paper. 
Out of their hearts they have never yet benefited their 
companions on life's journey. They look at everything 
from a dollar and cent standpoint. These, with the 
indifferent, care-nothing-either-way people, make up the 
sum total of our chronic growlers, and their sneers have 
about as much effect on the tidal wave of temperance as 
the angry words of a child might have in endeavoring to 
drive back a whirlwind. 

Those who early enlisted in this work of saving men 
and making women and children happy are still in the 
field. They have been paid for all labors an hundred 



314 SUNSHINE. 

and a thousand fold. Perhaps not in dollars — they have 
not looked for wealth of pocket — but in thanks and 
praises and heartfelt prayers of gratitude their remuner- 
ation can not be estimated. They are working on, 
knowing that a kindly act, be it ever so small, can not 
escape the notice of the Great Balancer of Accounts, and 
that He who noticeth even the sparrow's fall notes down 
for adjustment each word and act and marks the good 
for an eternal increase in the harvest of the By-and- 

By. 

There are men who do not endorse our movement lest 
business interests should be endangered, men who ask 
first concerning a moral movement "will it pay?"— 
financially. Lest they sell a few yards less of calico or a 
few pounds less of sugar, they refuse their means and 
personal help to the cause of humanity. The former 
could be used with good results. The latter, the 
personal help, of such men the cause can get along very 
well without. Such men, who weigh souls in jewelers' 
scales with dollars for weights, are not helpful in any 
good work, but if their eyes could be opened to the fact 
that it always pays to do right, perhaps they could be 
of service In this work. When a man can refuse to help 
the sorrowing wives and children of a community lest 
he lose the custom of the saloon keeper he betrays first 
that he is not of the race of "Abou Ben Adhem," who 
was written down, as Leigh Hunt has told us, "as one 



l'envoi. 315 

who loved his fellow-men," and second his poor abilities 
as a logician. Suppose the temperance cause, carried on 
by brave men and women, takes from the saloon keeper 
half a hundred of his best customers, transforming them 
from drunkards and loafers to loving husbands and 
fathers and bread-winners for the loved ones, what is the 
result? The saloon keeper loses his income — his ex- 
penditures are as nothing compared to those of his flush 
times when he had these half hundred men working for 
his gain; his custom becomes almost worthless to the 
business man, while the custom of the half hundred 
reformed drunkards increases in about the exact pro- 
portion, man to man, that the saloon keeper's custom 
decreased. The business man who has cared less for 
the patronage of the saloon keeper than for the welfare 
of humanity, gets the increased custom of the reformed 
men, who speedily find out the men who helped them to 
their feet, while the man who feared it wouldn't pay to 
go against his business interests by fighting the saloon 
traffic gets no portion of custom from the reformed half 
hundred — only keeping the saloon keeper's custom 
he thought so much of and which — with his sup- 
porters gone into ways of sobriety — is worth nothing 
at all. Setting aside the moral question of payment for 
doing right, it will pay the business men financially 
to take hold of this great reform. It will pay 
them to be open-mouthed and loud-spoken in the 
work. 



316 SUNSHINE. 

The arguments and logic of the writer are about 
exhausted. He has tried to handle the devil of drink in 
such a manner as to present each phase of the question in 
turn to the minds and hearts of his readers. His 
arguments, be they weak or strong, have come from a 
mind operated by a sincere and earnest heart. These 
arguments have been scattered all the w r ay between 
"Chapter I." to "Finis" — some in proper conjunction, 
others standing alone and out of place like a solitary 
maiden, of thirty-nine summers or "summers" about 
there, at a gathering of married people. Certain 
thoughts will be found duplicated, not because the 
first writing thereof had been forgotten, but because 
of the force with which the duplicated thoughts 
pressed upon the writer's mind, demanding not only 
iteration but re-iteration, that the appeal for 
help in that particular line might not be dis- 
regarded. 

A goodly portion of "Sunshine" is devoted to the 
young men and boys of to-day — those standing on the 
very threshold of manhood looking over the fields 
of life to the fair hills of success, and wondering just how 
the crest of the latter may be reached. This portion of 
the book has touched not only upon temperance but 
other attributes of success in life — honesty, education, 
pluck, thrift, courtesy, etc. May the writer hope that 
these chapters shall be closely read by those for whom 
they were written? He does not believe they will find 



i/envoi. 31 7 

grandeur of thought and expression, glimpses of 
wondrous originality qy sure guides to fortune ; but does 
hope that amid the many sentences some helpful ones 
may shine out worth transplanting into brain and heart 
and carried along over the great journey of life. From an 
active contact of fifteen years with the busy, bustling 
world, and from days and nights of study since childhood, 
the writer has culled from the brain's store-house what 
he thought might help his younger brothers in the 
battle of existence. If his surmises should prove true, 
and his words and ideas help any boy upward, he will 
feel that "Sunshine" has paid a grand interest on the 
original investment. 

To parents, husbands and wives the chapters devoted 
to them are commended. Perhaps if nothing really 
serviceable should be found therein, something may be 
found that will start their own brains to thinking out 
plans not yet followed that may be serviceable if 
adopted, and if such should prove the case the parties 
aforesaid will not have lost anything by perusing this 
booK. 

In writing the last few words to the friends of 
temperance the writer has but one additional word 
of advice and counsel : Work! Work on ! The great 
reform is gaining strength as each day's revolution 
of the world brings us so much "nearer home." The 
pale empress of the night never scales the distant 
heavens as the god of day sinks his splendor adown 



318 SUNSHINE. 

the hills of the West that the night air does not bear 
upward the thanksgiving of some man just saved, of 
some wife just made happy, of some child who sings 
in tearful voice the glad story of the father's home- 
coming with the temperance badge pinned above 
his heart. 

"The sword of the Lord and of Gideon/' girded 
on God's children in 1873, has rested but little in 
its scabbard, and to-day, as each day since the 
crusaders went forth to conquer, has it been hewing 
the wall of intemperance raised round the victims 
of drink. That mighty wall, once deemed impregna- 
ble, has been pierced in a thousand places and the 
slaves of strong drink have poured out of the 
breaches by hundreds for safety and shelter on the 
broad plain of temperance. Such results are worth 
continuing and all that is needed is work. Work 
on, heroes and heroines of the new crusade — the 
crusade not to bring back from Pagan lands the 
sepulcher of our Lord, but the crusade to bring 
back to life and light thousands for whom our 
Lord slept in that sepulcher — yet a little longer shall 
the heavens be darkened, but in God's good 
time — soon enough — will the enemy be routed, the 
drink-shops of Christendom be closed, the black 
smoke of distilleries scale the clouds for the last 
time, and Sunshine bright and perfect bless God's 
people for ever and ever. Pray on; sing on; 



I/ENVOI. 



319 



talk on, brothers 
the enemy weakens 
bluer, the stars 



and sisters of the great reform; 

day by day, the heavens are 

are brighter, the air grows sweeter 

as night succeeds night, and by and by, this side 

the By-and-By of the Beyond, we shall hear the 

chorus arising from forty-four millions of people in the 

land we love so well : 

"Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea, 
Jehovah has triumphed, his children are free," 




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